Monomyth
by Slavok
Summary: Myths, legends, fairytales. In the end they are all one story with a thousand different faces, and the Grail cares not who they are as long as a hero answers the call. Team RWBY joins the Holy Grail War, and finds that it may be more than they imagined.
1. The Call, Part One

Monomyth

The Call, Part One

" _Once upon a time there was a sweet little girl. Everyone who saw her liked her, but most of all her grandmother, who did not know what to give the child next. Once she gave her a little riding hood made of red velvet. Because it suited her so well, and she wanted to wear it all the time, she came to be known as Little Red Riding Hood."_

Rin Tohsaka stood upon a circle of silver and iron in her basement after midnight had been an hour dead. Ten years ago, in this exact spot, her father had summoned a being out of myth and legend. To fight in the Holy Grail war; _that_ was Rin Tohsaka's legacy. To hold the Grail in her hands; _that_ was her destiny.

And where legacy and destiny met, _that_ was her fate.

"My will creates your body," she said, "and your sword creates my destiny." She had memorized the incantation from her father's notes, but she needn't have bothered. Just as the Grail would later be the vessel of her wish, its will now flowed through her, demanding a champion in the war. In this moment, she could not have halted the spell if she'd tried.

"If you heed the Grail's call and obey my will and reason, then answer me. I hereby swear that I shall be all the good in the world. That I shall defeat all the evil in the world."

That oath was impossible, but it was what the Grail demanded she say, so she said it. She clutched a handful of gemstones, a king's ransom in price and worth even more in terms of the mana they held. It was the signature of the Tohsaka line to store magical energy in precious stones until a time of need, and Rin needed them now. The gems glowed red.

"You seven heavens, clad in the three great words of power, come forth from the circle of binding, Guardian of the Scales!"

The rubies in her hand, drained of mana, turned to dust.

WWW

"Servant Archer, Ruby Rose, reporting to … hello?"

Ruby looked around the room she had been summoned to. The _empty_ room. Sure, there were couches and tables, but that was it. _And I had a whole epic intro planned out for this!_

Well, it was probably for the best. Her intro sounded great in her head, but she wasn't sure how it would hold up out loud. "Anyone home?"

No one answered. Maybe there was a delay? Maybe her Master summoned her, waited around a bit, and went to bed. That made sense. After all, who would go through a summoning at—she checked a clock on the mantle—two o'clock in the morning?

Above the mantle a series of mounted swords caught her eye. "Ooh, shiny!"

 _Don't touch,_ she told herself. _Don't touch, don't touch._ She stood up on her toes and pulled one off the wall. She wasn't interested in using a different weapon, but she liked meeting them. Besides, it wasn't like Crescent Rose was going to get _jealous_. While Ruby's eyes might wander, her heart never did.

She held the sword, testing its weight and balance. It was elegant, sure, but more ornamental than practical and a bit too simple for her tastes. She prefered a weapon with a few surprises.

A door swung open and a girl a few years older than Ruby burst into the room. She wore a red shirt, a dark skirt, and had long black hair in pigtails. Her eyes grew wide and a smile spread across her face when she saw her holding a sword. "Yes!" she said. "I did it! I summoned Saber!"

Ruby looked at the blade in her hand. "Oh, sorry, I'll put this back. No, I'm Ruby. Archer. My class is Archer, my name is Ruby. What's yours?"

"No!"

Ruby blinked. "Your name is No, or no, my name's not Ruby?"

"No, you—my name is Rin Tohsaka, but that's not my point. I was trying to summon Saber, not some—some little girl with a bow!"

A bow? Ruby's eyes narrowed. "Okay, you haven't met my weapon yet, so I'll let that pass, but let's be honest. Swords are nice. They are. There's a real classic appeal to them. But you know what else swords are? Overused. Literally half the people I know use a sword. Don't tell Weiss, Blake, Jaune, Pyrrha, and the sword half of Beacon I said this, but there _are_ other weapons out there. Second of all, I'm not a little girl with a bow."

She unfolded Crescent Rose and brought it out with a blinding flourish before slamming it tip down into the wooden floor with a satisfying thunk. "I'm a little girl with a scythe."

Rin's eyes grew wide as she examined the weapon, which was the most common response Ruby got when people saw her with a scythe larger than she was.

"You broke my house!"

That, sadly, was the second most common response. Ruby's flourish had shredded the nearby couch, sending wood chips and stuffing all over the living room. And tore up the fireplace. And the expensive mahogany panelling. "Oh. Um, I'm sure Professor Goodwitch will fix that next time she's around."

"Who?"

"Professor Goodwitch … who's not here. I can fix this! Sorry, I'm just not used to wanton acts of destruction having long-term consequences."

"And that still doesn't explain why you would be an Archer."

"Because," Ruby said, growing more comfortable now that the conversation was returning to her perfect weapon, "this is also a gun." Before she could stop herself, she pulled the trigger in demonstration, sending a high-caliber round through the wall. "Sorry! I just—muscle memory!"

"Stop—breaking—my—house!"

This was not how Ruby was hoping her introduction into this whole mess would turn out, but this was still only the _second_ -worst first impression she had ever made. She still hadn't blown anything up yet.

WWW

By the time she woke up the next morning, Rin had (mostly) worked out a plan. Her Servant was wildly destructive, but as long as Ruby didn't kill her by accident, her summon could wreck whatever she liked.

Even though Ruby didn't come from any legend Rin recognized, she had fairly decent stats. Her strength and endurance were low, but those were an Archer's dump stats anyway. Ruby had A++ agility, making her almost definitely the fastest Servant in the war, and her Noble Phantasm was a solid A. As long as Rin was smart about how she faced her opponents, she had a chance.

Ruby opened Rin's bedroom door, carrying a tray. "Good morning, Rin! I made you breakfast."

Rin sat up in her bed and looked down at the tray. "That's not breakfast. That's a plate of cookies with milk. What are you, Santa Claus?" No. Father Christmas would be a Rider, not an Archer.

"Okay," Ruby said. "I made _myself_ breakfast, and brought extra in case you were hungry. But apparently you just hate happiness." She started munching on them, leaving crumbs on the rug. "So, what's the plan?"

"First we have to get you settled," Rin said. "Get you familiar with the city, pick out a good place to fight the other Servants, figure out what you're capable of. Speaking of which, you haven't told me who you are yet." She really should have asked her that last night, but she had been distracted by all the wanton destruction.

"I told you," Ruby said. "I'm Ruby Rose, Archer."

"No, I mean what legend you're from."

Ruby blinked. "Legend?"

"Yes, legend. I summoned you for the Holy Grail War, so that means you must be from some sort of legend, right?"

Ruby grinned sheepishly. "Um, oops?"

"Oops? What do you mean, 'oops?' You _are_ from a legend, right? Myth? Fairytale?"

"Was that in the fine print?"

"Fine print? What are you talking about?"

Ruby held up her hands defensively. "Okay, maybe I enter the league of legendary heroes someday with people telling stories about me for hundreds of years after I'm gone—which would be really cool by the way—but who gets to be a legend in her own lifetime?"

"Wait, you haven't died yet?"

The Holy Grail didn't summon people, it summoned legends of people, mixing fact and fable until it came up with someone who never truly existed. The historical figure merged with the stories told about her until she formed a heroic spirit. But if Ruby didn't have a historical basis at all then maybe her story ended with a happily ever after instead of a tragic death. Her "end" could be her riding off into the sunset, allowing her to be summoned without ever having died.

Ruby put her fingers to her throat to check her pulse. "Nope, still alive."

Alternative hypothesis: the Holy Grail was acting screwy.

WWW

They spent the rest of the day exploring the city. Ruby's outfit didn't draw that much attention; the few people who looked at her twice thought she was going to some cosplay thing, and she was just enough of a dork to make the alibi convincing.

Ruby was easily distracted, wanting to spend time looking at tourist attractions and inside pastry shops, but she had a surprisingly sharp eye for combat. She could glance at a location and decide if it had hard cover, soft cover, or no cover (whatever that meant), blind spots, ambush risks, and terrain advantages and disadvantages. Then she spent at least an hour on the Fuyuki skyline with her sniper scope, figuring out which areas she could hit from which building and which ones she could jump to.

Rin, for her part, had lived in the city her whole life and had grown slightly … obsessive in the past few weeks, so she knew the schedule of nearly every part of Fuyuki. The stadium had plenty of room to fight in, but it was crammed full of people well past midnight every weekend, while the water park closed at ten. Between the two of them, they managed to map out the best places to fight in, the worst, and the easiest way to get from the latter to the former.

"Alright," Rin said as the sun began to set. "That's pretty much all we can do until the war actually starts."

"And that's tomorrow?"

"Tomorrow night at sundown." The other Masters might have started weeks ago, building up their respective strongholds, but the Servants couldn't actually fight each other for another twenty-five hours. Not unless they wanted to bring the wrath of the Church down on them.

"Then there's only one thing left to do," Ruby said.

"No, Fuyuki city does not have recreational monster hunts," Rin replied. "For the last time, I don't know why you thought it would."

"The last thing we need to do," Ruby said, "is visit your parents."

Rin stopped. "What?"

"This may be the only chance we have before everyone starts trying to kill us, and if there are two of us and twelve of them, I'd say we have maybe a … fifty percent chance of coming out alive."

"Laws of probability aside," Rin said, "my parents … aren't around here anymore."

"Where are they buried, then?"

Rin looked up. "How did you know they were buried?"

Ruby gave her the same it's-obvious look she had given her when explaining the difference between softcover and difficult terrain. "Your house is way too big for one person, and the last family photo I saw was taken when you were tiny."

Rin stared at her. Ruby had been acting more like a kid playing a game than someone in a war since Rin had summoned her, but … well, Archers were supposed to be perceptive, right?

"Alright. Let's end the tour of the city with a trip to the cemetery."

WWW

Rin didn't visit her parents very much. It wasn't that she was repressing her grief at being orphaned when she was nine – she just didn't like coming any closer to Kotomine than she had to.

She glanced at the church, glaring at the priest through its walls. Her _caretaker._ Ha.

"Well," she said after they reached her parents' graves. "Here we are." When her father Tokiomi had died, his will had reserved a plot in the graveyard for her mother Aoi. There wasn't a third spot for Rin, of course. She was going to live for a long time yet.

Ruby looked down at the tombstone in silence for a long moment and pulled her hood up over her head reverently. "It's nice here. Lots of graves. My mom was buried by a cliff all by herself, and sometimes I get worried that she's lonely when I don't come to visit."

"How'd she die?" Rin wasn't sure what else to say.

"She was a Huntress," Ruby said, as though that explained everything. And perhaps it did.

"My father was a mage," she replied, also in explanation. _Like me._ No. _She_ was a mage like _him_. She had joined the Holy Grail War like _him_. Following his footsteps didn't look very promising looking at where he had ended up, but she owed it to him to finish what he had tried.

Didn't she?

"Was your mom one too?"

Rin shook her head. Tokiomi had been enough of a mage for both of them. The church was supposed to mediate the war, but even the Holy Grail War hurt a few innocent bystanders. Aoi had turned up in a hospital after being strangled half to death, and she had joined Tokiomi a few weeks later.

"Well," Ruby said to the two graves, "it's been great meeting you. I'm Ruby, by the way. I should have mentioned that. Or Archer, while I'm here. Your daughter summoned me last night, and she's really cool! We get along well and if we're lucky the next time we're here we'll have won the Holy Grail so … wish us luck!"

"Yeah," Rin said softly, looking down. "Wish us luck."

WWW

A/n I'd like to thank Magery for editing this chapter. Nearly every story I've published in the last few years has gone through him first.

The title is from The Hero of a Thousand Faces by Joseph Cambell. It's one of those books you can read when you want to pretend to be smart, and he would discuss the legends of Gilgamesh and King Arthur with the same gusto as Snow White and Little Red Riding Hood, so I thought it fit.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, leave a review. I love reading them and they make me feel good about myself.


	2. The Call, Part Two

Monomyth

The Call, Part Two

" _One day her mother said to her, 'Come, Little Red Riding Hood, here is a piece of cake and a bottle of wine. Take them to your grandmother, she is ill and weak, and they will do her good.'"_

"Rin! Rin! Wake up!"

Rin groaned and buried her face in her pillow. She had an alarm clock for a _reason_ ; so she could dread the start of the day instead of having it cheerfully barge into her room.

"Ugh, what is it, Archer?"

"Check this out!" Ruby said, standing in front of her bed, wearing Rin's school uniform. It was a little big on her, but not by too much.

"You're wearing my clothes," Rin said, sitting up. "That _really_ could not have waited until my alarm went off?"

"And now I'm wearing my clothes." A whirlwind of white energy surrounded her, and suddenly she was back in her black dress and red cape. "Your clothes." _Fwoosh!_ "My clothes." _Fwoosh!_ "Your clothes." _Fwoosh!_ "My clothes." _Fwoosh!_

"Okay, you can stop doing that."

"My scythe even reappears too! It's so much faster than calling down my rocker."

"Your rocker?"

"Rocket locker. I can be all, 'Oh, don't hurt me, I'm just an innocent little NPC,' and then fwoosh! Psyche! It's me, Archer!"

Rin fell back into her pillow. The Assassin class might have a skill that allowed them to go undetected, but any Servant would be able to recognize Ruby as one of them. Of course, Rin wasn't going to try to dampen her Servant's enthusiasm. She knew a losing battle when she saw one.

"So," Ruby continued, oblivious to the fact that Rin had another fifteen minutes before her alarm went off and she had to be a functional human being, "we have twelve hours and twenty … seven minutes until it finally happens! What are we going to do?"

She was an enthusiasm vacuum. A black hole of enthusiasm. Children all over the world on Christmas Eve would tell her to calm down. "Well," Rin said. "I'm planning on going to school." She needed to let everyone know that she was going to be absent for a while. It wouldn't do to have her friends knocking on her door to see how she was doing when a death match was going on. "You can do whatever you want till I get back."

"Alright," Ruby said. "I'm coming with you."

Rin blinked and shook her head. "No you're not."

WWW

Ruby wanted to go to school with her, and Rin wanted her to do virtually anything else. After discussing it for a few minutes they compromised, and Ruby came to school with her.

"Do you see this?" Rin said, showing Ruby her command seals. "Do you know what they mean?"

"They match my cape! That I'm not wearing."

"They mean that I'm in charge. Why don't I feel in charge?"

"Maybe because I have A rank Charisma."

"No you do not. Charisma isn't even one of your skills."

"What? Are you sure?"

Rin nodded. Ruby's skills and stats appeared like a floating chart over her head that Rin could see whenever she concentrated.

"So you're saying that I convinced you solely because of my legitimately good arguments? That is so weird."

Rin hesitated. "Let's not jump to conclusions." To be fair, everyone in the Holy Grail War would assume that the heir to the Tohsaka bloodline would be participating, and mage law might not be much of a deterrent for people in a deathmatch in pursuit of ultimate power. Another mage might try to take her out on her way home from school or in the school itself if Rin didn't have a threatening, intimidating Servant at her side.

Unfortunately, all she had was Ruby.

"Instead," Rin continued, "let's focus on your alibi. Who are you?"

"I'm your distant cousin from the other side of the world, and I wanted to see what your school was like."

"And under no circumstances are you to show anyone your Noble Phantasms."

Ruby wilted. "Does that include my scythe?"

"It's especially your scythe."

Her shoulders sagged. "Okay."

They arrived early, partially to get Ruby checked in at the main office and partially because of Rin's neurotic obsession with being on time. As soon as they crossed the front gate, Rin felt like someone had stepped on her own grave.

"What was that?" she gasped.

"What was what?" Ruby asked. "The gate? Is that new? I've never been here before."

"No, not the gate, the …" But Ruby was an Archer, not a Caster. She might have superhuman abilities, but she was not a mage. Rin was on her own.

She turned around, stepped back over the threshold, and felt her insides return to normal. But when she crossed back over to the school grounds, she felt it all over again. It was some sort of magical field, like the kind caused by wards. No. She had studied different fields, and entering an area that was warded was like stepping on bubble wrap if you knew what to look for. This feeling had latched onto her, like a leech.

It was an area of effect spell, waiting to be triggered, and Rin doubted that more than three people in the school had noticed anything.

She didn't know what was going on, but she knew why. With the Holy Grail War commencing in a matter of hours, someone had gotten a head start and had turned her high school into a death trap.

WWW

Ruby looked around at Rin's campus, not sure what she was expecting. Style, probably, or at least mechas. Mechas were fun. Then she saw something that never failed to catch her eye: weapons.

"Oh, look! Those people are carrying bows and arrows! Rin?"

Rin furrowed her brow, staring into the distance. "Quiet, I'm trying to concentrate." She stepped through the gate, then back again. Then she did it again, with the same expression of intense focus on her face.

"Okay. You do that, I'll, um, I'll be right back."

She followed the bows (and the people carrying them) until she came to an archery range. She had never used a bow before (which was crazy because she _was_ Archer), but she would always respect what they stood for. They were the simplest ranged weapons ever made that didn't need to be thrown—a machine that transferred the strength of the hunter's arm into the elasticity of the body of the bow, and then released that into a single arrow.

"So, you're interested in archery?"

Ruby looked around and found herself surrounded by … _people_. "Um, recently, but mostly I just like weapons."

The girl who was talking to her stared. "Um, okay."

Did she say something wrong? "I'm Ruby, Rin's cousin."

"Oh, I know Rin." She glanced over her head to look at Rin still at the gateway. "I guess I can see the resemblance." _Score!_ "Where are you from?"

No problem, she had memorized this part. "I'm here visiting from the other side of Remnant."

She blinked. "Where?"

 _Dang it!_ "Earth. I'm from the other side of earth."

She stared at her again, just like before. "Um …"

"Germany!" Rin said, running up to them. "She's from Germany."

"Oh." The girl looked down at Ruby. "You speak Japanese really well. I can't even hear an accent."

Wait, did people from Germany speak a different language? Dang it! No, she could do this. All she had to do was talk gibberish and pretend it meant something. Weiss did it all the time.

"Well anyway," Rin said, "we have to go. Later, Ayako."

"Aw, really?" Ruby asked, looking up at her in a way that always worked with Yang. "But they're _archers_ , wink, wink, about to do archery stuff!"

"Oh my gosh, you can't wink verbally."

"If you're interested," Ayako said, "we could let you shoot a few arrows, try to hit a target?"

"That's not a good idea," Rin said.

"Yes!" Ruby picked up a bow— _taut string, yew wood, simple without the recurve or compound enhancements_ —and grabbed an arrow— _straight, thin pinewood, fletched and untipped_.

"If you're new to this," Ayako said, "remember that a bow 'n arrow is not a toy, it's a weapon, so you should always treat it with respect."

Ruby nodded solemnly. Toys wanted to be played with, but a weapon wanted to _strike_. She could feel its energy vibrating through her arms with a gentle hum.

"Clear the field!" Ayako called out, a ritualistic safety procedure.

"The field is clear!" another member of the archery team replied.

"Pick your target and shoot," Ayako said.

Target? There were five of them: two at ten yards, two at twenty, and one at fifty. Her arrow wanted to fly, and fly far, so she aimed at the fifty yard target. The bow didn't have a scope like her sniper rifle, but who needed a scope for fifty yards? Who needed one for five hundred? All the bow needed was a sharp eye and a steady hand, and Ruby gave it both. She pulled back, exhaled, and released.

The bow let out a _twang_ followed by a gentle _thwick_ when the arrow impaled the red circle at the center of the target.

Ayako's jaw dropped. "Sweet holy … you sure that was your first time with a bow?"

Ruby nodded. "But I have spent a lot of time with guns, and they're both ranged weapons."

Ayako blinked. "Wait, what?"

Rin stepped forward. "They're a lot more lax about those things in Germany."

"I thought that was just Switzerland." Ayako shook her head. "Doesn't matter. Do it again. We need to make sure that wasn't just beginners luck."

 _Gladly._ She picked up another arrow, straight and rigid but oh so fragile. The bow was all smooth curves and supple wood in her hand. She pulled the string back like before, waited for the wind to die down around her, and released. The shot hit the first arrow right down the middle and shattered it into splinters.

Ruby winced. "Whoops! Sorry, I broke it."

"Forget that," Ayako said quickly. She turned to Rin. "I'm keeping her."

"What?" Rin started. "You can't—"

"Ruby," Ayako said, looking down at her. "What would you say if I could offer you a spot on the most prestigious archery team in the school?"

Her eyes widened. "Really?"

"She'd say no," Rin interrupted. "She's not staying here for very long, and she's going to be incredibly busy for the next few weeks."

"Did you not see her Robin Hood that target? We need her!"

Ruby's shoulders sagged. "Rin's right. I just signed up for this deathmatch thing, and that's going to be a major time sink until it's over. Thanks though."

Ayako gave her that same stare for the third time today. Oh, right, she probably shouldn't mention the war, either. "You play deathmatch too?" another archer said. "I love that game! What character do you use?"

She hesitated. "All of them?"

Before she could dig herself any deeper, the door opened and another boy walked into the dojo. "You again?" he said, glaring at Rin. "You claim you're not interested, but you continuously show up at my …" His voice trailed off and his eyes flickered toward Ruby. When it got awkward she waved. Silently the boy backed away and left.

"So," Ayako said, breaking the silence. "Are you sure I can't change your mind? We're short on members, you're a natural, and Shinji hates you. For some reason. So that's a triple win, right there. Just think about it, okay?"

Ruby nodded. "Okay."

"But right now we need to leave," Rin said, dragging her out the door.

"Well, that was fun," Ruby said after they had left. "Your friends are nice."

"Yes, they are."

Ruby looked at her. "Are you okay? You seem distracted."

She looked around to make sure no one was nearby. "Ruby, what would you do if you knew that everyone in this school was in danger of dying horribly at any time without warning?"

Her eyes grew wide. "Are they?"

"No, of course not, that was a rhetorical question."

"Oh, that's a relief. Well, I'd probably start screaming and tell everyone, come to think of it. How about you?"

She took a deep breath. "I'd try to keep it quiet and solve it on my own without causing a panic."

Ruby nodded thoughtfully. "Oh, okay. I've got a rhetorical question for you too."

Rin glanced around them again. "Shoot."

"What's our first class?"

Rin blinked. "That's not a rhetorical question."

Ruby frowned at her. "So only you are allowed to ask those?"

"Our first class is math. Hopefully you won't be recruited into any more clubs."

"Oh. Then what?"

"Second period is history."

"Okay. When's the magic class?"

"Magic class? What magic class?"

"The class where you learn magic."

"There isn't a magic class at this school!"

"But you're a mage."

"Yes."

"And you're going to school."

"Yes."

"But not a magic school?"

"No! This is a normal school with normal kids living normal lives who will never know anything about magic unless we screw this up!"

Ruby nodded. "Okay." They walked in silence for a moment. "Are you planning on transferring to a magic school any time soon? Because that sounds like a lot more fun."

WWW

Rin waited until after school had ended before she told Ruby about the barrier, and then spent the next few hours looking for glyphs. Her family hadn't specialized in sygaldry so she couldn't find even a single one until she was practically on top of it, but after reading it she could get the gist of what it did.

"When this activates," she said, standing on the roof over a glowing red symbol, "everyone in the area will die and these runes will absorb their souls."

Ruby gasped. "What? Why would someone do that?"

Rin gritted her teeth. "Extra mana." With the Holy Grail War going on, mana was going to be at a premium, and even people without circuits had a little. But enough to kill for? What kind of mage would do that? She knew that not all mages were like her father, but she expected them to have at least _some_ standards.

"Any idea who?"

Rin frowned. There were seven mages in the war, and the three major families always had a reservation. She was the Tohsaka, and then there were the Matous and the Einzberns. Shinji was representing the Matous, which surprised her. The Matous were great back in the day and helped create the Grail, but they had fallen far since then, and Shinji wasn't even a real mage.

But he had recognized Ruby as a Servant on sight when he saw her at the archery range. His expression was priceless, turning as pale as a ghost, but he couldn't have known that Ruby was anything more than a little girl with a bow unless he had a Servant of his own. There weren't any other mages at the school, so it had to be him.

No, that was stupid. Why would Shinji turn _her_ school into a death trap? He would have known that she'd recognize what was going on and kill him for it. No, it had to be a third party trying to either kill them both or turn them against each other.

"I don't know," she said. "But I can destroy this rune, and that should at least slow them down."

"Will they be able to rewrite it?" Ruby asked.

She nodded. "Yes."

"And there are more?"

"You can't make a barrier with only one. There might be three more or a hundred more. I don't know how many runes the spell needs to work, but I _do_ know it can't work with this—or any—one missing, so like I said, this will slow them down."

"I have another idea," Ruby said. "We should destroy the school entirely."

"What? No, just because this isn't a magical school doesn't mean you can destroy it, Archer. You can't solve all your problems with wanton destruction."

"It works for Yang!"

"Who?"

"Look, hear me out. You destroy this rune, and then tomorrow the evil wizard spends five minutes redoing it before putting down the rest and slaughters everyone by lunchtime. But if we wreck the school, they'll have to close it down and they won't get done fixing it until long after the war's over."

"Whoever scribed these runes could just redraw them somewhere else. It won't be a high school, but in a week they might dissolve an office building or a stadium. Either way people could die, but we can at least keep an eye on the school. If we can catch whoever did this, we can stop them."

"You're using your friends as bait, Rin!" Ruby said, looking up at her with her big, silver eyes. "That's not good."

"What? I'm not using anyone as … this is a war, there are always going to be …" Rin sighed. "Screw you and your 'A rank Charisma'. Fine. Do you have a Noble Phantasm that's good for property damage, or are we going to need to go home and make molotov cocktails?"

"Oh, don't take the cowards way out!" a third voice said. "You'll drag the war on forever if you always try to play it safe."

Rin looked up and saw a man standing on a water tank. He held a red spear, had red eyes, and wore a suit of blue spandex so tight Rin could see every chiseled ab of his six-pack. Lancer. Crap. Well, she brought Ruby along for a reason, and she might turn out to be stronger than she looked. Still, a fight against an opponent Rin hadn't studied in a place she hadn't planned on was not how she wanted to start the War.

"Did you do this?" Rin demanded.

"What, the Blood Fort runes? Sure, I love being boring and solving my problems with magic. The spear is just for show."

"You monster!" Ruby accused. "This school has an archery club, and they're awesome!"

"That was sarcasm, little lady" Lancer said. He pointed his spear at Ruby. "But considering that your perception skill was so low that you missed me standing here for the last five minutes, I guess I shouldn't be surprised you missed that. In fact, the only thing I'm surprised about is that a Servant like you was summoned at all."

"Servant?" Ruby said, trying to sound confused. "I'm not a Servant, I'm just an innocent little NPC." _Fwoosh!_ "Psyche! It's me, Archer!" She stood in red and black, her scythe in hand.

Lancer gave her a flat look. "Are you expecting me to clap? I can clap if you want me to."

Ruby considered that. "Yeah, sure."

"I'm not clapping," he decided. "That was an insult to Servants everywhere. Also, you're Archer? That's a scythe, not a bow."

Ruby glared at him. "It's not _just_ a scythe!" she said, pointing it at him. No, _aiming_ it at him. "It's also a gun."

With that, she pulled the trigger and fired.

WWW

A/n You know, I wasn't expecting this for at least a month, but here's chapter two! Well, it's up there. I'm assuming you've already read it if you've gotten this far.

Once more, I'd like to thank Magery for editing this chapter until it became readable, and the people who left reviews for motivating me to write more. And, if you want chapter three to come that much faster, all you have to do is leave another one.


	3. The Call, Part Three

Monomyth

The Call, Part Three

" _Once upon a time in midwinter, when the snowflakes were falling like feathers from heaven, a queen sat sewing at her window, which had a frame of black ebony wood. As she sewed she looked up at the snow and pricked her finger with her needle. Three drops of blood fell into the snow. The red on the white looked so beautiful that she thought to herself, 'If only I had a child as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony.'"_

Shirou scrubbed the dojo until it shone, or at least until it would have if it weren't dark outside, and then decided to call it a day. Or a night. Right. He scrubbed the dojo until it got dark and it was time to go home.

He didn't mind the work; if anything he enjoyed it. In some small way, he had made the world a better place. Sometimes his friends told him that if he was too soft others would take advantage of him, and maybe that was true, but whenever they needed help, his friends knew they could count on him. Always.

As soon as he started home, though, a sound rang out in the night. It sounded like … gunfire.

He ran, not away from the sound, but towards it. He wasn't acting out of a deficient survival instinct or even curiosity. For him, it was simple logic. If someone was shooting, someone else was getting shot, and if someone was getting shot then someone needed help. And Shirou Emiya never could pass by someone who needed help.

WWW

Rin had read everything she could on the Holy Grail Wars, but nothing could have prepared her for seeing two Servants fight. Apparently being in an all-or-nothing deathmatch didn't inspire people to record much for prosperity.

 _Thanks, Dad. Really appreciate it._

Rin knew how a mage could use magic to enhance her physical abilities, and assumed that Servants would be like that taken up to the max, but she was wrong. These Servants made those mages look like children.

Lancer attacked with a ferocity that was only matched by his precision, so strong his attacks shattered cement and so fast Rin could barely follow his movements – but if anything Ruby had the advantage. As an Archer Servant, she should have been ill-equipped against a melee opponent, but she could make her scythe spin around like helicopter blades and her A++ Agility turned her into a red blur of movement when she wanted to. Then, whenever she got a bit of distance, her weapon folded into a gun and she could shoot him until he caught up.

"I take back what I said," Lancer said, holding a bleeding cut on his arm. It wasn't a victory with how quickly Servants could heal, but it _was_ first blood. Their fight had taken them all over the school, and Ruby had managed to land a hit when she had tangled Lancer up in the tennis court. "Only a true Heroic Spirit could have kept up with me, kid. But I've been going through everyone I can think of who used a scythe, and you don't match any of them. Who are you?"

"You could have just asked," she said. "I'm Ruby. Ruby Rose."

Lancer blinked. "Really? You're going to give out your name, just like that? I still don't recognize you, but I feel sort of honorbound to give you mine too." He pulled his hand away from his wound, which had already stopped bleeding. "I'll tell you what, kid. If you can guess my name, I'll show you my ultimate attack."

Ruby gasped. "Really? How many guesses do I get?"

He shrugged. "Three."

"Archer, no!" Rin shouted. Servants kept their identities a secret to keep their Noble Phantasms shrouded in mystery, an ace in the hole when everything went to hell. If you could defeat your opponent without revealing yours, then you had an advantage in your next fight, but if you had to face a Noble Phantasm, it was best to do it when your opponent was too weak to use it to its full potential.

"Ah ha!" Ruby said. "You've revealed yourself to me, Lancer! I've heard your story before and I know your name! You are—"

"Ruby!"

"Rumplestiltskin!"

Lancer gave her a flat look. "Actually, I take it back. I think I'm just going to kill you."

Ruby hesitated. "So, was I right?"

"Nope. But I'm going to show you my Noble Phantasm anyway."

"Yes!"

Lancer shifted his stance, and his spear began to glow. It burned like a red sun, and poured off magical energy in waves.

"It's so shiny!" Ruby gushed.

This was bad. Rin didn't know squat about what Lancer would do next, and Ruby was too busy squeeing to think straight. Rin could order her Servant to counter with her own Noble Phantasm, but A ranked or not, what was an anti-eldritch horror attack going to do against Lancer?

Without warning, he stopped. "We're going to have to put this on hold for a bit. Looks like we've got an audience."

Rin's blood went cold, but Ruby remained oblivious. "Really? Neat."

"Uh, you do know how mage law works, right?" he said.

The Statute of Secrecy allowed for no witnesses. At least, none alive. "Is that like physics, only backwards?" Ruby asked. "What goes up, stays up and stuff?"

"In this case it's a matter of dealing with witnesses. Some idiot sees magic, tells everyone, causes trouble. You know how it is."

"Oh," Ruby said. "So, what, you're going to tell him that we were just rehearsing for a play or something?"

"Sure. Don't go anywhere, kid, I'll be right back."

Lancer vanished into thin air … off to kill someone. Someone who was just in the wrong place in the wrong time. But if Lancer hadn't been so eager to follow the rules … then that would have been Rin's job. To do the right thing and murder a complete stranger for the sake of mage freaking law.

Only … it wouldn't be a stranger. This was her school, wasn't it? If someone had seen their fight here, then it would be a teacher or a student, someone Rin might know who had just stayed late. The pages of the yearbook passed through her mind; friends, classmates, people she had seen in the hallway but had never talked to.

Lancer was going to murder one of them.

 _And it's all my fault._ The Servants were fighting at the school because _she_ was at the school. There wouldn't have been anything to witness if Rin Tohsaka hadn't brought the Holy Grail War to her high school.

And if it was her fault, then … then shouldn't she be the one to pay for it?

 _There will be blood on my hands either way,_ she thought. _If nothing else, I should take responsibility._ Being a mage meant not leaving your messes for someone else to clean up. She owed it to herself, to her father, and to the poor, hapless fool who was about to die.

"Ruby. He's going to kill the witness."

Ruby spun around and stared at her. "What?"

"Any non-mage witnessing magecraft must be executed," Rin said. "That's why we try to keep this quiet. If you're fine with Lancer executing whoever saw us, then continue to stay here and do nothing."

WWW

Shirou had followed the sound of gunfire looking for trouble, and boy did he find it. Instead of the common criminal or gang warfare he had been expecting, he had stumbled across a mage duel.

He stared at it in awe for far longer than he should. A mage duel? Seriously? At his own school? His father had taught him a bit of magic before passing away, but in ten years Shirou had never met another mage.

Until tonight. And holy freaking crap were they something else. Human limitations? Ha! These guys barely obeyed the laws of physics. It was like a red and blue tornado tearing through the schoolyard punctuated by the clash of metal on metal and the occasional bullet.

Then it stopped, and the man in blue with the red spear looked at him. At that moment, Shirou decided that he was being rude and nosey and should leave these two superpowered being to their own business. He turned and walked away, then decided he needed the exercise and started running.

He nearly ran right into the man in blue in the middle of the hallway before skidding to a halt.

"Hey," he said, twirling his crimson spear idly like a long, lethal baton. "See anything interesting?"

He had red eyes to match his weapon. "Nope. And whatever happens between two consenting adults is none of my business."

The man cocked his head. "I wouldn't really call her an adult, but whatever. Would you believe me if I told you we were rehearsing for a play?"

Shirou hesitated and his eyes flickered to the point of the man's spear. He had seen him in action and knew how fast he could move if it came down to a fight. "Yes. I would believe that completely. And I don't want to—"

A red blur came out of nowhere and hit him square in the chest, sending him sliding down the hall. "Run, little NPC!" a red cloaked figure said, standing between him and the spearman. "Save yourself!"

The spearman struck, and the girl in red defended herself with her scythe. Their attacks blurred, sending up sparks and tearing up the hallway.

"An Archer," the spearman said, "should know better than to get in a fight in such tight spaces!"

"A Heroic Spirit," she said, "should know better than to try to murder innocent bystanders! What kind of hero are you?"

"You ruined my punchline!" he snarled. "I was going to tell him that we were working on a play, he'd ask which one, then I'd say Macbeth and stab him!"

"That's—not—funny!"

"Not now that I've explained it!"

Shirou scrambled to his feet. "I'm not an NPC," he protested, still wheezing from when the girl had crashed into him. "I'm a hero." As the two of them fought, the girl with the scythe lost ground, taking a step back with each attack. If Shirou stayed still, she'd probably bisect him on the follow through. "But still terribly underleveled for this encounter!"

He hated to hide behind a girl that looked like she was even younger than he was, but the bitter truth was that she had seemed to be doing better in her fight when she wasn't trying to protect him. Some day he'd be a hero, some day he'd save someone, but tonight he was just in the way.

He turned and ran around the corner—and crashed right into Rin Tohsaka.

"What the— _Rin_?"

"Ah! …you!"

"What are you doing here?"

"I … have a perfectly good reason to be here! And that's none of your business!"

Rin Tohsaka. On the long list of girls in his school he didn't feel comfortable talking to, she was at the top. Basically, she was perfect. Not just in terms of appearance, though she was gorgeous, but … but that could wait.

"We have to get out of here, right now!"

"How about you leave, and I'll catch up to you later."

The sound of weapons clashing against each other rang through the hall. How could Rin not hear it? "No, this is serious. See, there are two people working on a play, and they really don't want to be … ah, screw it. Look. I know this sounds crazy, but magic is real, and there are two mages here trying to kill each other and anyone else they meet along the way." Only the blue one was actually like that, but he didn't have time to complicate things.

Rin's expression changed from incredulity, to shock, to surprise, and then finally settling down on … disgust? "Oh, you've got to be kidding me."

"I am _dead_ serious right now!"

"And how do you know this?"

"My dad was a mage." He did not have time for this. _They_ did not have time for this!

"He didn't teach you any magic, did he?"

"Uh, he did." A little. Enough get him a part time job as a handyman, which had seemed pretty cool until tonight. "I'll be happy to show you when we are far, far away from here."

Instead of believing him or deciding that arguing was more trouble than it was worth, Rin started laughing. Her body shook silently as two superpowered mages were killing each other right around the corner. Shirou finally dropped the diplomatic approach and grabbed her arm, willing to drag her from the school kicking and screaming if it saved her life—but she broke his grip with some karate move he hadn't studied.

She strode out around the corner in full view of the psycho spearman. "Rin, no!" He ran out and jumped in front of her, to be a human shield if nothing else. As long as the man in blue didn't get a good look at her, he'd only go after Shirou.

"Lancer!" Rin said behind him. "It's okay, he's one of us."

The fight stopped. "What?" the spearman said.

"Adorable," Rin said, stepping around Shirou. "Out of my way. This guy's one of us. He's a mage. There's no need to kill him."

"He's a mage?" the spearman said.

 _One of us?_ It clicked. "You're a mage?" he said to Rin.

"Yes. So like I said, _there's no need to kill him._ "

The man's eyes narrowed. "Is he part of the war?"

"What war?" Shirou asked.

The spearman's eyes narrowed further.

Rin laughed and put her hand on his shoulder, which would have seemed friendly if it weren't for her vice-like grip. "He doesn't get out much and must have missed the memo. You know how these things get lost in the mail. Really, if there's anyone to blame for this, it's that stupid priest. He really needs to get his head on straight and stop giving the Church a bad name."

War? A magic war? And Rin was in it? And there was a priest involved? Shirou considered trying to feign knowledge of something that he was completely ignorant of, but decided that would be a colossally stupid idea and instead nodded in silent, terrified agreement.

The spearman … actually smiled. "So I guess this was just one big misunderstanding. It's pretty funny if you think about it."

"Hilarious," Rin agreed. "Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha ha." She squeezed his shoulder, and he figured that he ought to laugh too.

"Though come to think of it," the spearman said, "maybe a public school isn't the best place to fight in."

"Ooh! We could go to the waterpark," the girl in red said. "They're closed right now, we checked."

The spearman hesitated. "To be honest, this whole silence-the-witness game has kind of killed the mood. Some other time, kid."

With that, he disappeared. He didn't just run away really fast, he straight up faded from existence. Okay, fine. That was fine. Shirou wasn't planning on sleeping again anyway.

The girl in red gave a whoop and jumped in the air. "You did it, Rin! You saved the day!"

Rin laughed and leaned against against the wall, exhausted. "I'm just happy I didn't have to kill him."

"Kill who?" Shirou asked. "And there's a war going on? Since when?"

Rin glanced at him. "Oh, right. I'm betting you don't keep in touch with the rest of the magical society, do you?"

"No! I didn't even know there was another mage in the city, let alone my high school!"

She nodded. "Figures. Basically Fuyuki city was designated to host a periodic deathmatch a few centuries ago and it will be over in a few weeks at most, so just stay out of trouble and you'll be fine."

"What? But … but …" He looked at Rin, whom he had known for years without ever knowing at all, at the girl in the red cloak carrying the massive scythe who looked years younger than he was but was able to go toe to toe with that spearman, and at the hallway where they had fought. In about a minute, they had covered the walls, floor, and ceiling with holes and slashes, and it looked like a warzone … covered in rose petals, for some reason.

Rin started to walk away, and the little girl followed behind her cheerfully, waving at him as she passed.

"Rin, wait, Rin!"

She turned, annoyed. "What?"

"You're a mage."

She rolled her eyes. "You don't have to sound so surprised. You're one too. Supposedly."

"Can you teach me magic?"

She blinked. "What?"

"Can you teach me magic? My dad taught me the basics, but that was a long time ago and I've been stuck teaching myself ever since."

Her gaze turned from annoyed to cold. "Yeah, that's life. Deal with it."

"Rin, please! Before my father died, he had a dream, one that never had the chance to make a reality. I promised him and I promised myself that I would—"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" she shouted. Shirou took a step back. The whole time he had known her, he had never seen her lose her cool. Not during the years at school, and not while she was talking down the spearman from murdering him. She calmed immediately. "Have you noticed how you're not dead right now? Focus on that, because I don't have the inclination, and certainly not the time, to teach you anything."

"She's right," the scythe-girl said. "The war is going to be keeping us _super_ busy until it's over. We'll probably be up all night long making bombs."

"Wait, what?" he said. "Bombs?"

"Ignore that. Ruby, it's late. We should head home." Rin gave him a look of … what? Anger? Concern? "You should too. Forget this happened."

WWW

"Well, that was fun," Ruby said after they got home. She was rummaging around the kitchen for … something. Was she making herself more cookies? Servants had strange dietary needs. "I hope the rest of the War is like that."

Rin didn't. The last thing that a war should be was personal. Still, they had fought, and they had lived, so that was something.

"Hey Rin, you're smart. Can I ask you something?"

"Sure," she said, lying on the couch and staring at the ceiling.

"Why do you think that Lancer guy quit like that?"

Oh. "It's simple. He was at a disadvantage. When he was going against you one on one, you were about even, and I could have joined the fight to push the battle in your favor. I didn't, though, because I need to supply you with mana. But then Shirou showed up, another mage, and for all Lancer knew he might be really good. Not _Servant_ -good, but maybe enough to tip the balance. Better to just leave and come back when the fight's more even."

"But if you think he was strong, why didn't you want to team up?"

"Because he wasn't strong. He probably knew, like, one cantrip and has been clinging to it like a family heirloom." She had memorized the names of every significant mage-line on the planet. Shirou Emiya would have had to be _incredibly_ insignificant to have sunk below her radar. "Besides, this is my fight, not his." Winning the Holy Grail would mean nothing if she did it through underhanded means like teamwork or some other such nonsense.

"Oh, that makes sense," Ruby said. "I was worried that Lancer thought you were lying to him to trick him into not killing your friend, and only pretended to believe you so he could wait until we split up and kill that Shirou guy on his own, but I like your idea better."

Rin sat up abruptly. "Oh, _crap_."

WWW

Shirou walked home in a daze. That morning, everything had made sense. Right now, nothing did.

 _Rin's a mage,_ he thought, still trying to wrap his head around that. He didn't actually see her do any magic, but her little friend was crazy. In terms of ability, he meant, though didn't she mention something about making bombs as well?

 _Rin's a mage, and she uses the school for secret, magical death matches._ No, she was using the _city_ for secret, magical death matches. Should he report her? To whom? The magical police? If they even existed, it sounded like they were in on it.

Kiritsugu hadn't told him much about the rest of mage society, and had really only taught him two spells. He could look into an object to see where it was broken and where it was weak, and he could strengthen it. But to be able to do what that scythe girl and the spearman did … what could _he_ do with that kind of power?

Kiritsugu had only lived a few years after pulling Shirou out of that fire, but he had died happy because he had managed to save someone. Ever since then Shirou had wanted to experience that for himself, except in the past ten years he could count the number of people he had saved on zero fingers. However, if he could run up walls and move with blinding speeds, stand in front of unstoppable forces and turn them aside he could … he could do anything! He could _save_ anyone!

That meant learning magic, though, and he had spent the last decade trying to teach himself without success. He had practiced the bit of reinforcement magic he knew and could fix old junk like a champion, but his attempts at learning anything new had culminated in looking it up online and finding a list of Harry Potter spells.

They … didn't work.

If he could get Rin to teach him, or set him up with someone else willing to teach him, or lend him a book, he'd be able to actually move forward!

 _That's it,_ he thought after he got home. _Tomorrow at school, I'm going to bother Rin about learning magic again until she_ has _to give me what I want._ That's what Shinji did, and he wasn't at all a slimy jerk. Right. Maybe ask the scythe girl? She seemed … stable, grounded, and not terrifying.

"It really is crazy how we keep on running into each other," the blue spearman said.

Shirou jumped. "You! You … followed me home?"

He was leaning against the wall on Shirou's porch. "Lucky you. You get to cross having a violent stalker off your bucket list. And just in time, too."

Shirou stepped back. "Are you here to kill me or just talk?"

The spearman shrugged. Rin had called him Lancer, hadn't she? "Can't we do both?"

"Crap."

Lancer struck, but Shirou dodged just in time. Or tripped. He tripped just in time.

"Hey kid! Did you hear the one about Macbeth?"

"Yes, and it wasn't funny then!" He scrambled to his feet and darted around his house. He needed a weapon, something to defend himself with. A magic sword! If he had a magic sword, that would be awesome. He grabbed a stick up off the ground. Close enough.

He channeled his magic into the piece of wood. Either the spell would make it stronger, or break it. It didn't break. Perfect.

Lancer struck again, a lazy jab, like he was trying to poke him with a magical, lethal weapon instead of stab him, and Shirou's magically enhanced stick deflected it.

"Hey, was that reinforcement magic?" Lancer asked, amused. He batted the stick away playfully, like a cat with a ball of yarn. "You really are a mage! I thought that girl made that up to get me to not kill you."

"That's what this is about?" he asked. "You could have just, I don't know, asked me to prove it before trying to impale me!"

He shrugged. "I don't know if you've noticed this kid, but I'm not the sort of guy to talk through my problems."

"Well, now you know I'm _really_ a mage, you can leave. Right now."

"Yeah, but there's another thing about me. After I decide to kill someone, I can't really change my mind. It's pretty much my heroic flaw."

"What's heroic about that?"

"You really don't know much about heroes, do you kid? Tell you what, to make you feel better, I'll give you one free hit before I kill you." He rested his spear across his shoulders. "Go ahead, take your best shot."

Shirou hesitated, but only for a moment. No one was coming to save him this time, and the only way to get out of this alive was to win. All he had was a reinforced stick, but you couldn't have someone like Taiga Fujimura always coming over without learning a few things about kendo.

He charged and swung, two-handed, and the stick came straight down on Lancer's head. It was like hitting a block of iron, and Shirou felt vibrations run down his forearm, but somehow the stick didn't break.

Lancer didn't flinch. He didn't even _blink_.

 _What is this guy made of?_

"Not bad," Lancer said. "Okay, that was terrible, but you tried your best, and that's what matters. Now it's my turn." He grabbed Shirou by the arm, lifted him up, slammed him into the ground like a ragdoll, and threw him into the air. Shirou landed so hard he _bounced_ , and when he rolled to a stop his dislocated shoulder was the least of his worries.

The most of his worries was casually walking toward him to finish him off.

Fortunately, adrenaline was an excellent pain killer, and nothing got his adrenal gland pumping like impending doom.

He pulled himself to his feet and gathered his bearings. Where was he? He was … he was next to his shed. Okay then, he'd try that and see where it got him. He limped inside and locked the door behind him. Now if he could just hide in here and wait until morning …

Lancer kicked the door down, sending Shirou crashing into the wall. Oh, right, superhuman strength.

"Don't take this personally," Lancer said. "A lot of people die for no reason at all. You get used to it."

He hadn't felt this helpless since he was cooked alive in that fire, waiting to die. But he had survived that! Against all odds, he had lived, and he didn't last this long just to die now.

"Any last words? Like I said, I came to talk, too."

"Yeah, I got some, but they've been said before." Shirou took a deep breath. "What kind of hero are you? You say I don't know much about heroes, and maybe you're right, but I know that heroes _save_ people! They don't hunt people down and kill them for no reason! They don't do _this_."

Lancer looked down at him with cold, red eyes. "You think that's what it means to be a hero? You're living in a fairy tale. Saving lives has nothing to do with being a hero, kid, and most of the heroes I've met never have. If you want to be a good person, great, and if you want to make the world a better place, more power to you. But if you want to be a hero? You have to go beyond the threshold." He raised his spear to finish him off. "And that's something that you've never done."

He struck, but his spear was deflected by … a rune, written on the air, in the geometric image of a white snowflake. Then the far end of the shed exploded, sending old boxes flying in every direction, and in their place stood a girl in a white dress.

Shirou stared at her like he would stare at any other miracle. Her clothes, her skin, her hair were so white she shone like the moon, and she walked with the perfect grace of a dancer on stage.

"Wha …"

The girl held up a hand to silence him. "No," she said, her voice refined and faintly musical. "You already summoned me late, started the War without me, and you left your old junk all over my summoning circle. That's already three strikes against you. Do _not_ make this worse for yourself by talking." She turned to the spearman. "Lancer, I presume."

Lancer glanced at the rapier in her hand, a thin, delicate instrument that looked more like an expensive decoration than a weapon. "Saber. I get to fight both of the other knight classes in one night. If this is what E rank luck gets me, then yippee ki yay."

"Please ignore the mage behind me," the girl called Saber said, standing between him and Shirou. "I will be your opponent." She didn't _look_ like much of a fighter, but neither did that scythe girl, and she held Lancer off just fine … and Shirou was too beat up to do anything at all.

Lancer grinned wolfishly. "I wouldn't have it any other way."

WWW

A/n Here is a (tentative) chart of Ruby's stats:

Parameters:

Strength D  
Endurance D  
Agility A++  
Mana C  
Luck B  
Noble Phantasm A

Class Skills

Magic Resistance E  
Independent Action B  
Item Construction D

Personal Skills

Advice of the Strategist C  
Clairvoyance C  
Accelerator Turn B

Noble Phantasm

Crescent Rose Anti Unit B+  
Rose Petal Run Anti Unit (Self) B  
Silver Eyes Anti Eldritch Horror A

If you see anything that you think should or should not be there, let me know and I might be able to change it. The same goes with the rankings, but as Team Four Star's Vegeta once said, power levels are bull crap. Explanations for everything can be found online on the typemoon wikia. I'm not much of a Fate junkie, not enough to write a fanfic about it, but Magery is enough of one for both of us and he looked over Ruby's stats as well as the rest of the chapter, for which he is most awesome. And you know who else is awesome? You guys, everyone who's read this and left a review. You rock.


	4. The Refusal of the Call, Part One

Monomyth

The Refusal of the Call, Part One

" _Soon afterward she had a little daughter who was as white as snow, as red as blood, and as black as ebony wood, and therefore they called her Little Snow-White. And as soon as the child was born, the queen died."_

Lancer backed out into the yard, spear raised warily, and Weiss followed him. Good. An old storage shed was no place for a fight. Outside was much better. Room to maneuver, fresh air, lit by moonlight, a (hopefully) worthy opponent. She had already arrived late, and she wasn't about to fall further behind.

"What's going on?" her "master" said, struggling to his feet behind her. Ugh. Clearly she was going to have to explain to him how these things worked. She had specifically told him not to talk. "Who are you? Where did you even come from?"

She ignored him. "Lancer," she said. "It looked like you were in the process of finishing off this person before I arrived. Did he put up much of a fight?" She studied him as she spoke. Lancer's spear was a simple weapon with no moving parts and (probably) no surprises, and so came with a spear's strengths and weaknesses. He had greater range, but if Weiss could close in beyond his weapon's strike zone, she'd have the advantage.

"'Fight' isn't the word I'd use," Lancer replied. "He could take a hit, though, and I have to respect that."

Weiss nodded. "It seems he has taken more than one. Perhaps he should tend to his own wounds and not interfere with the battle between two individuals far beyond his abilities." Lancer himself was another problem. Getting in close was a reckless move, and it depended on how much faster she was than her opponent. Of course, if he knew the difference in their Agility stats, then he might adopt a more defensive position.

Lancer grinned. "You're absolutely right. A Master should let his Servant fight the War he was summoned for, and not _micromanage_ every little thing he does, either."

Was he bringing his own relationship problems with him to work? Hardly professional.

He struck, a thrust straight for her face. She tilted her head to the side and dodged, narrowly avoiding gaining a second scar. He followed with a flurry of attacks, forcing her to parry. _So that's how fast you are._ She could work with that.

She formed a glyph at her feet, boosting her speed with a bit of lightning Dust, and she attacked. She ducked under the point of his spear and breached his guard, but before she could strike he brought his weapon up vertically and spun it like a windmill. He deflected her attack just in time, and on the follow through brought the butt of his spear crashing against her hip, sending her—into a dignified and graceful cartwheel.

Right. Not quite how she was hoping it would turn out.

"Nice rune work, by the way," he said. "I have to draw them out like a sucker, but you can cast them like, well, a Caster." He frowned. "You didn't take that cheap Double Summon skill, did you?"

She shrugged. "What if I am?" Despite her bravado, she was nervous. How much did this man know of her runes? Did he respond so quickly because of his unparalleled reflexes, or did he know what her glyph would do when she cast it?

She'd have to fight smarter. If runes wouldn't help her, she'd turn to Dust. Weiss thumbed Myrtenaster's revolver back by two slots to ready the gravity Dust chamber, and used the most underhanded tactic she knew: patience.

Lancer grew tired of waiting and attacked. Thrust. Typical. Thrust. She dodged, stepping back to stay just barely in his range. Lancer finished with a wide, sweeping thrust, more to knock her off balance than to do any damage.

Perfect.

She blocked his spear, holding her rapier so lightly it would have been knocked out of her hand if she weren't imbuing it with gravity. Instead, the Dust completely reflected the spear's momentum, throwing Lancer off balance. Weiss switched to ice Dust, drove Myrtenaster into the ground, and froze Lancer to the ground in erupting ice crystals.

"Crap."

Before he could recover, Weiss formed six more glyphs around him in a hexagon, and launched into an omnidirectional attack. Up-down-left-right-front-back, Lancer frantically tried to block, but his feet were frozen and his movement hindered. Most of her hits barely landed, but she got at least on good, clean blow in right through his side. She had expected Lancer's Aura to shield him, but Myrtenaster came back covered in blood. Eew. Maybe he had taken the Enhanced Regeneration trait instead of Aura Shield, but still … eew.

Lancer broke himself free of the ice and smashed his foot into the ground to break off the residue. "Well, I wasn't planning on using that kidney soon anyway," he said. "As for you, little Miss Saber, not a whole lot of people combine weaponry and rune magic like that, and I've only ever met one better."

Weiss made a face. "I doubt that." Unless Winter had come too, and what sense did _that_ make?

His face twisted in dislike. "No, it's true. And it's bringing up some _seriously_ unpleasant memories." He shifted his stance and his spear _exploded_ into red energy, rippling in the air. "I've been itching to use this all night, and if you really think you can surpass the Queen of Shadows, then you might even live!"

A gunshot rang out in the night, and Lancer's spear spun to block it, breaking his stance and interrupting his attack. "Seriously?" he said, turning. "Look, kid, do you mind? I'm in the middle of something! And do you want to see my Noble Phantasm or not?"

Ruby Rose stood on a nearby rooftop. When had _she_ gotten here? Well, before Weiss, obviously, she was the last one to arrive, but how had Ruby found her?

"Not if you're going to use it to murder—Weiss? When did you get here?"

" _Ahem_."

"Uh, I mean, Saber! Who are you? I'm meeting you now for the first time."

"Wait," Lancer said. "You two know each other?"

"No," Ruby said slowly. "I just said that I was meeting her now for the first time. By the way, do you have some anti-bullet thingy? Because I've been shooting you all night and you keep on blocking me!"

"Oh, right," he said. "Protection from Arrows. It works on all ranged attacks."

Ruby's jaw dropped. "Really? That's crazy! My entire class is _built_ around ranged attacks!"

"Well, if you don't like it, feel free to take it up with the Grail."

"Maybe I will!"

"Maybe it's designed to add a more strategic element to what would otherwise be a mad brawl?" Weiss suggested, keeping her eyes on her opponent. "If Lancer has an advantage against you, then he might decide to put off fighting you until after you defeat a Servant that has an advantage against him."

"Like rock-paper-scissors?" Ruby asked.

"Sure."

" _Or_ it just means I need to find a work around." She unloaded her gun and put in a new cartridge.

It wasn't a gravity round Ruby fired next. It was a flame round, that exploded on impact.

"Argh!" Lancer blocked it, but it still burned him. "Oh, that's a cheap trick."

"And here's another one!" Ruby said. "Hey, Saber, wanna team up?"

"I don't know," Weiss said. "I was in the middle of a duel with him before you showed up and tried to steal my kill."

"I wasn't trying to steal anything! I didn't even know you were … I mean, if you want me to wait till you're done …"

"Okay, we'll team up, but afterwards, _Archer_ , we are going to have a long talk about personal boundaries and how they relate to mortal combat."

Lancer jumped back to the far end of the yard. "Yeah, I'm done. As much as I'd like to end the first night of the War doing both of you at once, my Master gave me explicit orders to not have any fun. Literally, those were the prick's exact words. Even used a Command Seal." He hesitated. "Of course, if you two were to try to stop me from leaving, I would have no choice but to lethally defend myself." He waited. "What? No takers? Really?"

"Nah," Ruby said. "Saber's right. It wouldn't be fair to have us gang up on you. You should come back with a friend some time. It'll be more fun."

"Right," Lancer said. "Because friendship and fairness are what the Holy Grail War is all about." He vanished.

Well, Weiss had survived her first fight here. It wasn't quite a victory with Lancer still alive and mostly unharmed, but it was—Ruby tackled her in an attack hug.

"Hey! Get off me!"

"You made it! This is perfect! With you here we can find the others, do a mega teamup, and it's gonna be awesome!"

"Right, yes, that's wonderful, but I'm still trying to get my bearings. I only just arrived. So you haven't found any of the others?"

Ruby shook her head. "Nope. I only got here two days ago, and the only one I met besides you was Lancer, so at least no one took their spots yet."

Well, that was something. Yang would be easy to find, and Blake … Blake would probably find them. "You've been here for two days already?" Weiss hadn't been waiting for that long, but she knew better than most how malleable time could be. That meant that the others might have arrived weeks ago. What kind of chaos could Yang Xiao Long do in a week? Well, she'd deal with that later. "What are you doing here? Hunting down that Lancer fellow?" If that was the case, then Weiss had actually interrupted _Ruby's_ duel.

"No. Well, kind of. We thought that Lancer might try to kill a random NPC we ran into earlier."

"I'm not an NPC," the redhead who had summoned her said, groaning and stumbling out of the shed.

"Hey, you're still alive!" Ruby said. "Good to see you again."

Just then, a girl in a red coat came running into the yard. She looked around frantically. "He's … he's not here. Did he not show, or …"

"Oh, he showed up," Ruby said. "But Saber and I drove him off."

"What, _Saber_? Saber's here?"

"Uh-huh," Ruby said. "Rin, this is Saber. Saber, this is my Master, Rin."

The girl named Rin gawked at Weiss. " _You're_ Saber?"

Weiss nodded. "Naturally." She hated her already.

"But—I—who summoned you?"

Weiss flicked her sword to the redhead standing in the door of the shed. She really ought to learn his name at some point, if only because _Master_ was a title she was never going to use. The redhead waved weakly. "Hey, Rin. You're in my yard."

" _You_ summoned Saber?" Rin said. "I can't believe this! I hate you!"

Well, that was one point in his favor. He was still at negative two, though.

"What?" he said. "What did I do? I haven't had a clue what was going on since I saw you at the school! That Lancer guy tried to kill me _again_ , then this girl named—Saber, was it?—Saber appeared in my shed and had a magic duel with him, and I haven't been this confused since the Manchester Cannon incident in sixth grade!"

Weiss turned on him. "Hold on, you summoned me on _accident_?" She was an accidental summoning? Forget negative two, he was at negative five.

The boy took a deep breath. "I don't think I've done anything intentionally all day."

"Oh," Rin said slowly. "So you're not actually trying to compete in the Holy Grail War."

"I still don't know what it is."

"I see." She was, Weiss decided, a snake, and she smelled blood in the air. Or were those sharks? No, sharks smelled blood in the water, snakes _tasted_ blood in the air. Rin smiled. "Well then, let's go inside and I'll tell you _exactly_ how much trouble you're in right now."

WWW

After relocating his dislocated shoulder (which turned out to be a lot less painful than he expected it to be), Rin began her infodump.

"Like I told you earlier, the Holy Grail War is a deathmatch. Every few decades, seven mages gather in Fuyuki City, and the last one alive gets a trophy."

"That sounds dumb," he said. "No offense, but why would anyone do that on purpose?"

Rin shrugged. "It's not for everyone, but victory means a lot of prestige in certain circles. The Holy Grail can even be quite useful under the right circumstances, but the real prize is bragging rights."

His head spun, and not just from the adrenaline crash. If this was how most mages thought, then that would explain why there were so few of them in the world. He glanced at Saber, who was pointedly not making eye contact, but he could feel her judging him. "And where did Saber and the other one, Archer, come from?"

"They're the weapons," Rin replied. "Each mage is granted a Servant to fight through, and the Servant exists in this world by siphoning off the Master's mana."

He made a face. "You make them sound like they're not even human."

Rin gave him a flat look. "You saw their fight. Did that _look_ human?"

Not even close. But after the fight ended, Archer had started wandering through his house with all the wonder of a child, and that wasn't the sort of thing he'd have expected from a weapon.

He took a deep breath. "So basically, people I don't know are going to try to kill me until this is over."

"Not necessarily," Rin said, smiling. "Some people you _do_ know might try it too. Assuming you don't quit."

He blinked. "I can do that?"

"Of course. You're the Master, not the Servant. If you don't want to compete, that's up to you."

He hesitated. "What's the catch?"

"People might call you a weenie in the future, but that's pretty much it."

"What about that Lancer guy? He still knows where I live."

"The Church is mediating the War. If you want to quit, it's one of their responsibilities to provide shelter for people who have _no business fighting in the war whatsoever._ Because seriously, Shirou, you don't. There are people from all over the world who have been preparing for this their whole lives, who actually _want_ to be here, and that's not you. The best thing you can do for yourself is just walk away."

"Wait, the _Church_ is part of this?" Shirou asked.

"Of course," she said. "The Church and the Mage's Association go way back to the point when they stopped burning witches. The priest here is a mage himself so, you know, multiclassing."

"Huh." So all these years he had been trying to learn magic on his own, and he could have just gone to church. Weird that his dad had never mentioned it.

A cry came from the kitchen. "Oh my goodness!" Archer said, rushing into the room holding a plastic jar. "You have cookies in the shapes of animals! Can I have one?"

Rin scowled. "Do you mind? We're trying to have a serious conversation here!"

"But … look at them," Ruby said. "They're cookies. And they're cute."

"Have as many as you like," Shirou said. The girl had saved his life already, so it was the least he could do.

"Yay!" Archer grabbed a fist full of animal crackers and started eating them. "Want one, Weiss?"

Rin turned. "Wait, do you two know each other?"

Archer looked around nervously. "I mean, do you want one, Saber?"

Saber (Weiss?) sighed. "You know, it's a good thing you don't have any secrets, Ruby. Otherwise you could get in a lot of trouble."

"Okay, okay," Ruby said. "Weiss and I went to school together."

Rin frowned. "In your past life or in the Throne of Heroes?"

"Actually, we just call it Beacon," Ruby said.

"The Beacon of Heroes?"

Weiss rolled her eyes. "No, just Beacon."

Ruby frowned thoughtfully. "I kind of like what Rin said better. The Beacon of Heroes, for people who have finished with the Signal of Heroes, found in the Vale of Heroes. Think we could get Ozpin to change the name when we get back?"

"Slow down," Rin said. "Get back? Did you two _plan_ to come here?"

Ruby took a deep breath. "Okay, I'll explain everything. It all started a long time ago, in an Academy far, far away …"

FLASHBACK

"Alright!" Ruby said, leading her team out of the cafeteria. "The Super Awesome Food Fight was a resounding success, and now it's time for Phase Two of The Best Day Ever!"

"Oh, please," Weiss said. "Don't pretend you planned any of that."

Ruby opened her binder (that she definitely did not borrow from Weiss) and shoved it in her face. "Read it and weep. I admit that the S.A.F.F. was originally Phase Forty-Seven and scheduled for lunch time, but it was pushed forward a few hours. Now, we can move on with Phase Two, which was originally Phase One, which is …"

END FLASHBACK

"… and, well, here we are," Ruby finished.

Rin stared at her in horror, disgust, and denial. " _What?_ You what? Are you telling me that you—you _hijacked_ an ancient and revered magic ritual because—because you were _bored?_ "

Ruby shuffled uncomfortable. "Well, it sounded fun. And I was _right_ , by the way, it was."

"Debatable," Weiss muttered.

"I've been preparing for this my whole life!" Rin moaned. "I can't believe this nonsense."

"Well, enough of that," Ruby said. "Let's focus on more important things, like team attack names. Weiss and I already got one, but if you two ever want to do a combo spell, we've gotta call it something cool."

"What?" Rin said. "No! There will be no team attacks, because there is no team. Shirou here was just deciding to resign."

"What?" Ruby stared at him. "You can't quit! Then you'll just go back to being an NPC!"

Shirou hesitated and turned to Weiss, who had saved his life that night and had barely said a thing to him since. "Weiss? You're involved with this too. Do you have a preference?"

She looked away. "Do what you want," she said. "I don't care."

"After you break your contract with her," Rin explained, "she'll be transferred to another Master, one who actually wants to be here. This is best for her, too."

Weiss didn't exactly sound neutral, but Shirou didn't know how much he should read into her tone. Ruby wanted him to stay while Rin seemed to want him to leave, though the choice, ultimately, was his. To fight? To run?

Part of him wanted to stay and fight, but he knew that was stupid. Ever since Kiritsugu had died, Shirou had been waiting for the—the _opportunity_ to become the hero that he had promised his father he'd become, and being chosen to fight in a mage-exclusive tournament was an opportunity in flashing, neon letters.

Or pulsating, bloody letters, he supposed, considering it was a death match. And, if Rin was any indication, was one full of mages who knew what they were doing, while Shirou had barely _heard of_ the basics of magic. Besides, now that he knew about the relationship between the Mage's Association and the Church, all he had to do was talk to the friendly, neighborhood priest and he'd be set to learn more about magic.

Maybe it wasn't brave, but it _was_ wise, and wisdom was heroic too, wasn't it? "Rin's right. I wasn't supposed to be involved with this in the first place. I'm quitting."

Ruby's face fell, Rin bit back a smile, and Weiss … Weiss was unreadable.

"Alright then," Rin said. "Let's go to church and get this over with. Come morning, the Holy Grail War will seem like nothing more than a bad dream."

WWW

A/n Another week, another chapter. Um, don't expect me to keep this pace up. I honestly don't know how I got this far. I bet it has something to do with all the encouraging reviews I've gotten from all the wonderful people who've been reading this. You're amazing, all of you. And a special thanks goes out to Magery for editing this chapter.


	5. The Refusal of the Call, Part Two

Monomyth

The Refusal of the Call, Part Two

Weiss, Ruby, and the two mages walked to the nearest church. Shirou turned and gave Weiss a few vaguely apologetic looks. She didn't say anything to him. He didn't deserve it. Ruby tried to start up a conversation more than once, but it died down soon. Finally they arrived at the old building—now they could get this affair over with.

"So," Shirou said, breaking the silence, "this Kotomine priest will take me out of the War?"

Rin nodded. "He'll tell you how to break your contract, take care of transferring your Servant, and put you under the Master Protection Program."

"Is that the real name of the program or did you make that up?" Shirou asked.

Rin shrugged. "Does it matter? Come on."

"Are you sure he's going to be up this late?"

"Oh, sure. I'd call him a vampire, but those sleep during the daytime. Really he's more of a golem."

"Are vampires … nevermind." He turned to Weiss. "Are you coming?"

She shook her head. "I don't think so." If she had wanted to sit and listen to people decide her fate, she would have stayed in Atlas.

"Yeah, I'll wait outside too," Ruby said. "With all the lights out, that church looks crazy creepy. Hey Weiss, wanna check out the cemetery?"

"Might as well."

The two mages went inside and Ruby lead Weiss to the adjacent graveyard. Weiss had never been a grave person, but Ruby seemed to be enjoying herself.

"Look at this one!" Ruby said in front of a statue. "This, um, Miozaki person got a cool angel lady on his … her tombstone. When I die, I want one just like that, only with a scythe."

"Uh huh."

"And over here, you got a couple that died on exactly the same day! June fifth, nineteen-eighty-five. That's so sweet."

"Right."

"Or maybe they both died in the same car accident or something. It's hard to tell with just the dates."

"Really."

Ruby looked up at her. "Hey, Weiss, are you doing okay?"

"I'm fine."

Ruby waited.

Weiss sighed. "I mean, why should I care? I just met that idiot. And it's not like he's breaking up with me personally, he's just … not ready for this sort of relationship. Best to cut it off now while there's still time to find someone else."

Ruby smiled. "Sure. And maybe we could share Rin. I don't think there's a rule that says that a Master can't have two Servants."

Weiss made a face. "Eew, no. I don't know how you manage to get along with that girl, but I know I certainly couldn't."

"Oh, she's not that bad. I mean, sure, she's a bit of a perfectionist and has daddy issues like nobody's business, but she's a lot of fun after you get to know her."

"Well, whatever. I'm not sure I'd be happy being anyone's Servant, to be honest. I'm mostly waiting until Blake and Yang show up."

Ruby grinned. "Yeah, things can be a little rocky now, but just wait till Yang gets here! She can make anything fun."

WWW

Rin had never liked Kirei, but she had to admit that he had always excelled at one thing above all else. The only problem was that one thing was to make her feel childish and inadequate. It irked worse than usual today, because for the first time in her life, the skills that let him do that were the skills she needed.

Kirei stood in front of the altar, silhouetted by the candle light. A book snapped shut as they entered, but he did not turn. "In all the years I have watched over you," he said, his deep voice resonating through the chapel, "you have never come to me for help. And yet here you are, with whom I can only assume to be the seventh Master at your side." He turned, finally, and faced them, looking little like a priest or even like a king, but like the sort of man who laughed at kings. "What can I do for you?"

"How did you know that I …" Shirou started. He shook his head. "Nevermind. I'm Shirou Emiya, and I joined this war on accident and would like to get out."

"Shirou … Emiya," he said. There used to be powerful magic involved with knowing someone's name, but that was from a time when people _had_ powerful names. Still, Rin never liked it when Kirei said hers, and she assumed it was like that with everyone. "You joined the Holy Grail War on accident? How exactly do you think that happened?"

"Um, a girl with a sword appeared in my shed and started fighting a guy with a spear."

Kirei smiled. His smile was so patronizing, if he weren't a priest he would have gotten shot years ago. "No, you misunderstand. The Masters do not choose themselves—they are chosen by the Grail itself."

" _It_ chose me? But I thought it was just a trophy?"

"I wonder who might have told you that," he said, his eyes flickering toward Rin. "No, the Holy Grail is an artefact of near omnipotence and has a will that it reveals to few. The fact that it has granted you a Servant and Command Seals with which to control her is proof that it has revealed its will to you, Shirou Emiya, proof that it _wants_ you to fight for it."

Shirou hesitated. "Well, that's tough, because I don't want to fight for it, and I can't understand why anyone would."

"You can't? The Grail grants any wish in the victor's heart. Surely you can imagine why that might be tempting."

"There's a wish?" Shirou glanced at Rin. "I must have missed that part."

"It's no good if you lose," Rin muttered.

"It doesn't surprise me that young Miss Rin here may have left out a few details," Kirei said. "Some people might be willing to risk everything to get what they want, but to have that thing _given_ to them? It would be an affront to their dreams. Take Rin for example—you don't mind, do you? No, of course not. Take Rin for example. She was orphaned at a young age when her own father died in the previous War. But does she fight for the Grail to wish her parents back from the dead? No, of course not."

"Wait, it can do that?" Rin asked.

"Instead she fights to prove that the remnants of the Tohsaka family are still worth something. Rather vain, petty, and small minded if you think about it, but that's just the way she is."

"Hey!" Rin said. "I didn't bring him here so you could insult me."

"No," Kirei said, looking at her. "You brought him here so I could eliminate an opponent from the Holy Grail War whom you did not wish to kill. Being a combatant means fighting your own battles, and if you hope to win you'll have to understand that." He looked back to Shirou. "But there is one more matter to consider. There is the fight, your wish, and finally there is the wish of everyone else. The third War occurred in the nineteen-thirties, at the start of the second World War. Winning mattered less than making sure that the Masters wishing for genocide and the subjugation of the free world lost. In that war, seven mages determined history."

Shirou's eyes grew wide. "That happened? But isn't the Church supposed to mediate this? Shouldn't that include vetting homicidal maniacs?"

"Yes, but that's the thing about psychopaths," Kirei said. "Sometimes they slaughter people indiscriminately and summon eldritch horrors in the middle of the Mion river, and sometimes you don't realize what they are until after they acquire unlimited power and burn down the Shinto district."

"Wait, _what_?"

"Oh, yes. The previous war ended with that fire ten years ago. Either a Master lost control of his Servant, or he _wished_ for that disaster."

Even in the darkness, Rin could see Shirou start to tremble, and she couldn't tell if he was about to throw up or scream. He chose to scream. "Do you have any idea how many people _died_ in that fire?"

Kirei paused. "Oh. I am sorry for your loss, Emiya. I can't imagine what you must have been through." He almost sounded sincere. Rin supposed that his day job gave him plenty of practice.

"And you still have this war in a city?" Shirou said. _"What the hell is wrong with you?"_

Kirei took a step forward, the sound echoing through the chapel. "Do you understand now why you have been called?" he asked, his tone far more than imperious.

Shirou breathed and stood up straighter. "Yes."

"And do you still refuse the call?"

"No."

He smiled. "I'm glad we had this talk. If you have any other questions concerning the Holy Grail War, I am always at your disposal."

 _Stupid priest,_ Rin thought as they exited the church. The one time she had counted on him to crush someone's dreams and ambitions, he had chosen to be encouraging. The _one_ time! Typical. Still, the man continued to be incredibly good at giving terrible advice, and now Rin was going to have to kill one of her classmates.

 _See if I ever come back to you for help._

WWW

An owl hooted, and dozens of miles away, Illyasviel von Einzbern watched her evil half brother come out of the church through her familiar's eyes.

Good. She had been worried that he might drop out of the war, and then how could they play together? She would have had to "accidentally" lose control of Berserker, watch helplessly as her Servant slaughtered a priest, and then apologize to a major religion as Shirou Emiya lay chained up and bleeding in her basement—what fun would that be?

Quite a bit, actually, but she'd rather skip the hassle and go straight to the family reunion. And since her evil half brother had apparently rejected the protection of the Church, she could do that.

"Berserker!" she said. "It is time to make our appearance!"

Berserker snored defiantly on a plush white couch.

Illyasviel stomped her foot. "Awaken, Servant!"

Berserker jolted awake, sat up, and blinked owlishly. "Wha? What's going on?"

She was fairly certain that Servants didn't need to sleep, and that Berserker only did it to annoy her. "The Holy Grail War, remember? The whole reason I summoned you? It's starting!"

Berserker pulled her boots on. "You said that before I fell asleep, and then you started scrying for hours on end." She glanced at a clock on the wall. "Holy crap, three a.m.? Glad I didn't wait up."

"Hurry up! If we get there fast enough, we'll be able to fight two Master-Servant pairs at once."

"I'm not driving you anywhere until I've had a chance to wake up first." She opened the wine cabinet and pulled out a can of something carbonated. When she had arrived, Berserker decided that Illyasviel was too young to drink, threw out all the wine bottles, and replaced them with snacks and energy drinks.

"Let's go, already!"

Berserker chugged a can of Berserk, which was probably less healthy than anything alcoholic and had more caffeine than water.

"Berserker!"

Berserker finished it off, and looked around for a place to put the empty can. "I can't get used to living in a place with no trash cans."

"We don't _need_ trash cans, we have maids!"

Sella accepted the can and bowed.

"Thanks, Sell," Berserker said. "You're the best."

"Can—we—go—now?" If they arrived too late … then they'd just have to hunt down her evil half brother and whatever Servant he had summoned. That didn't sound so bad, but Illyasviel had already waited for this confrontation for ten years. Every extra minute felt like agony.

"We're going, we're going."

They walked outside to Berserker's motorcycle. It was painted black and yellow, and Berserker had named it _Bumblebee._ Berserker put on a helmet over her bushy blonde hair, and helped Illyasviel do the same.

"Is this really necessary?" she asked as Berserker carefully made sure that the strap didn't pinch anything.

"Safety first."

"That is a terrible expression for a Berserker. You are an insult to the Berserker, class, do you know that?"

"I just don't want you to get hurt. Is that so bad? Okay, we're good."

Illyasviel sat on the motorcycle behind her Servant. "Remember, you are to kill the other Servants, and can even take out the other Master if you're not busy, but my evil half brother is mine. I want to make sure he suffers properly before I slaughter him."

Berserker laughed. "You are just adorable, you know that?"

Illyasviel pouted. "Being adorable will not prevent me from slaughtering my enemies."

"Ain't that the truth." The motorcycle's engine roared to life. "My little sister does it all the time."

WWW

Shirou walked out of the old church feeling … whole. He felt a sense of purpose now, as his vague desire to help people gave way to a tangible process to save them. It wasn't just purpose, either, it was _fate_. His life ended during the fire caused by the last Holy Grail War, and he gained a new life with a new purpose, a new, magical world, and even a new father at that same moment. For the past ten years, that new self had been pointed to this same War, and he _would not fail._

He might die, but if he saved someone along the way, he'd consider it a life well lived.

He found Weiss with Ruby in the nearby cemetery. Maybe in the morning the girl would seem wholly unremarkable, but in the dead of night she still looked like she was made of moonlight.

"Are you done?" she asked coolly.

"Actually, no," he said. "Just the opposite. Now that I know what's at stake, I'm going to stay and fight. I have to. If … that's okay with you."

Her light blue eyes widened. "Oh," she said. "… oh."

"I mean, if you'd prefer someone else …" She hadn't _voiced_ a preference either way, but he was a novice mage at best, and this was a war.

"It wouldn't be worth the trouble," she said quickly. "I already went through the bother of learning your name, and I wouldn't want to make that a wasted effort."

Ruby grinned. "Alright! Now, first things first; Shirou, I'm going to need to know your favorite color."

Shirou blinked. "Um, I don't know. Red?"

Ruby shook her head. "No, red's already taken. I need another one."

"Ruby, you're thinking about this wrong," Weiss said. "For team attack names, you need team attacks, and him attacking anyone in this war is the exact opposite of what is supposed to happen."

Ouch. Still, he had seen her fight Lancer, and he was glad she hadn't seen his attempts at the same. "Anyway," he said, "I'm still a little iffy on some of the details of this war, but it's not something I can walk away from."

Weiss nodded. "The only thing you need to worry about is not dying. Beyond that, it would probably be best if you disregarded everything the Rin girl told you tonight. There was an ulterior motive to everything she said that wasn't blatantly false, and her outfit was tacky to boot."

"Hey!" Rin said. "I am right here, listening to everything you're saying."

"Do you hear something, Ruby?" Weiss said. "Some desperate, mewling creature in the distance struggling to reassure itself, perhaps?"

"No, that's just Rin," Ruby said. "She's right here. I … don't know how you missed her." She snapped her fingers. "Magic Bullet! It's perfect!"

"Well, it has been quite a night," Rin said. "Welcome to the Holy Grail War, Shirou. I'll see you tomorrow after school."

He nodded. "Good idea. We'll need to share information and coordinate if we're going to work together."

Rin frowned. "Let me clarify that. I'll be _killing_ you after school tomorrow. This is, as I may have mentioned, a deathmatch, one that you willingly joined."

He stared at her. "What? Why?"

She spread her arms wide. " _Welcome_ to the Holy Grail War, Shirou. I hope it's everything you hoped for. Don't say I didn't warn you."

WWW

a/n And that's the end of chapter five. I was kind of worried about the chapter length, but I didn't want to mix up Refusal with the Threshold Guardian. I would like to thank all my supportive readers who have kept on reading my work all this time, and especially Magery, for editing this chapter despite losing his hand in a freak hockey accident. The goalie never knew what hit him.


	6. The Threshold Guardian, Part One

Monomyth

The Threshold Guardian, Part One

 _"Once upon a time there were three Bears, who lived together in a house of their own, in a wood."_

Two months before the War, Illyasviel walked through the forest around her home. The snow crunched under her feet and the walnut trees were just beginning to bud. She loved it this time of year as deeply as she hated it.

She wasn't here for the scenery, though. She was here for the slaughter.

She heard the padded feet of a wolf behind her. Wolves didn't often go after humans, but the winter had been long and Illyasviel was simply a small animal, alone in the forest.

She smiled. "Oh my. What big teeth you have."

The wolf growled, but didn't attack. Wolves waited until you ran. How else could they know you were prey? If she stood her ground, the big bad wolf couldn't know where she was on the food chain.

 _Well, let's clear that up, shall we?_ She plucked a strand of white hair from her head and molded it into a bird. The wolf's yellow eyes darted up, and it seemed ready to run—right up until her bird blasted it with magical bolts, tearing through its flesh, and then it couldn't run at all.

With that done, Illyasviel proceed to paint the snow with the creature's blood.

The summoning circle didn't _need_ to be drawn in blood. Mercury would have been more elegant, but her whole life had been elegant. She needed something _savage_.

"Berserker," she said aloud. The Masters of the Holy Grail War always went after certain Servants, as though reading a hero's myth made the Heroic Spirit more predictable. She shook her head. Everyone worried about legends—no one considered class.

Illyasviel didn't need a catalyst, only the right mindset. To summon Assassin one would need thoughts of darkness and deception; a Saber Servant came from thoughts of honor and nobility.

Berserker came from rage.

No Master had ever summoned Berserker and survived the War, but Illyasviel knew that she wouldn't live through it no matter what she summoned. She didn't need to survive. She only needed to win.

She began her incantation, and remembered her father. He used to take her through these woods at the end of every winter, used to carry her on his shoulders. She remembered that—remembered every time he told her he loved her. Every time he lied.

 _You abandoned me._

She felt a surge of magic as her Servant entered the world.

A girl with golden hair looked down at her and grinned. "Hey, kid. What's up?"

Illyasviel blinked. "You're Berserker?"

She shrugged. "My friends call my Yang, but sure. Berserker! Rar! Yang smash!"

"Yang?"

"Yang Xiao Long. Pleased to meet you."

Illyasviel didn't recognize the name. It sounded Chinese. Berserker didn't look remotely Asian with her golden blonde hair, fair skin, and violet eyes, but Heroic Spirits often had unique phenotypes. "My name is Illyasviel von Einzbern."

"Illya-what now?"

She sighed. Berserkers were strong—they weren't known for their high intelligence. "Or you could just call me Master."

"Illya it is, then."

She frowned. "Are you sure you're a Berserker Servant?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die." Yang stepped out of the summoning circle, glanced at the dead wolf in the snow, and didn't mention it.

"Because the defining feature of the Berserker Class is the Mad Enhancement skill. It's supposed to increase your parameters at the expense of your reason and sanity."

"Oh, is that what it does. I kind of skimmed over the manual. I learn best by doing."

 _Manual?_ "But, you _are_ a Berserker, right?"

"Sure, no problem. Crazy rage monster. I'll turn it on when it's time to kick butt. So, do you live out here or what?"

 _You'll turn it on?_ "No, I live in the manor a few minutes that way. I thought it best to summon you away from anything fragile—I assumed that a _Berserker_ would attempt to wreck everything in sight."

She eyed her Servant, not hiding her disappointment. Strictly speaking, a Berserker that could control herself was better than one who could not, but Illyasviel had been preparing for a disaster. Having a pleasant conversation instead of the challenge of bending a horrible monster to her will felt like a let down.

"A manor, huh? So what's a little girl like you doing playing in a deathmatch?"

 _Little?_ Well, she was older than she looked, but that didn't change her size. "I'm not playing. I assure you I'm taking the Holy Grail war _very_ seriously."

"'Cause that's always fun."

"Besides, the risks of this War are rather overstated." She knew she sounded overconfident, but it was the truth. She was the vessel of the Holy Grail, and after completing her purpose, she'd die no matter who won, and she'd rather die fighting than wait for others to fight over her. Surely any Servant worthy of the title of Berserker would understand that. "My grandfather—you'll meet him when we get home—he's the one obsessed with winning, but personally, I just want revenge."

Berserker grinned. " _Now_ we're getting somewhere! Who are we pounding?"

"My evil step-brother." Being the Grail's vessel had its perks. Shirou _Emiya_ was going to join the War whether he wanted to or not.

Her Servant laughed. "Evil step-brother? That's hilarious! I mean … sad? What'd he do?"

"He stole my dad. He was supposed to come home after the last War, but instead my dad decided he'd rather stay on the other side of the world with some brat he picked up." Family was supposed to mean something that she could depend on, something that would last forever, not something that could be traded out in every town like a cheap souvenir. "My step-brother probably has no idea what he did, but that won't save him. You focus on whatever two-bit Servant he summons, but leave him to me. He will die, he will die slowly, and he will die by my hand."

Berserker nodded. "Right. Parental abandonment issues. Say no more."

"What?"

"Anyway, let's get you home before you freeze to death," she said, despite the fact that Illyasviel had arrived dressed for the cold in boots, a coat, and a hat, and Berserker was dressed for … what, a club? "Come on, I'll give you a piggyback ride."

She gave Berserker a flat look. "I'm nineteen years old. I think I'm too old for piggy back rides."

Berserker laughed. "I used to lie about my age when I was little, too. I never did manage to talk my way through, but it turns out that if you beat up the bouncer, they stop caring how old you are."

The Servant picked Illyasviel off the ground as if she weighed nothing and set her on her back. Illyasviel had a surge of memories of someone else carrying her through these frozen woods years ago, and she glared at the back of Berserker's head.

"I'm not enjoying this, you know," she said. "This is not fun for me."

"Right," Berserker said, laughing. "Keeping telling yourself that you're not having fun. It makes me stronger! Because you know what? I am Yang Xiao Long, and I promise you, Illya, that I will _always_ keep you entertained."

WWW

The hero's path, Shirou decided, was never easy—full of risks and dangers, known and unknown, and at some point along it, the hero must face his greatest fear. That was why the greatest virtue of any hero would always be courage.

Shirou summoned his courage from the depths of his soul and spoke. "So, Weiss, do you like … stuff?" _Brilliant,_ his brain said. _You clearly don't need my help with this._

She turned her head toward him as they walked back to his house. She had a scar over her left eye that served to only highlight the flawlessness of the rest of her features. "Yes. Also, I might add, you are doing a fantastic job of convincing me that this is not your first attempt at conversation."

 _Cold._ Should he keep talking? He should keep talking. _Silence is the enemy. Silence is the darkness in which all light dies._ Besides, he was a hero (in his mind, at least), and heroes never gave up. "I like stuff too! Um …" _On second thought, shut-up. Silence is fine._

"Riveting. Truly."

"Thanks." She had given him a compliment, if only sarcastically. He got the feeling that most of her compliments were sarcastic. Unfortunately, the time for small talk had passed, because they had arrived at the threshold. Or rather, they were back at his house. Where he slept. And where Weiss was going to sleep. That was … that was something that people had to deal with in magic death matches, right?

"So …"

"Yes?" she asked.

"You see …" Of course, they weren't going to be sleeping _together_ together. Just in the same house. That wasn't too weird.

"Go on."

"The thing is …" Of course, they did just meet, like, an hour ago. They were going pretty fast by anyone's standards. Well, by his standards, at least. If half of what Shinji said in the locker rooms was true, he had slept with every girl in the school … at the same time. Though Shirou doubted that Shinji had much more experience with women than he did, and likely just didn't have the courage to admit it.

"What?"

"Because I'm … and you're …" _Courage_. That was the trait that separated the hero from everyone else, but the truth was, he'd give anything for a timely distraction.

"Spit it out."

That was when he nearly got ran over by a motorcycle.

WWW

Despite her flaws, Berserker knew how to make an entrance. She drove by just close enough to scare him without hitting him before screeching to a halt. Illyasviel got off the black and yellow motorcycle (before her Servant could help her) and took off her helmet.

"Shirou _Emiya_." She smiled, as though his name didn't taste like poison on her tongue, as though she hadn't been looking forward to this moment every night for the past ten years. "You have no idea how long I've been waiting for—"

"Weiss?" Yang blurted out.

"Yang?" her evil half-brother's Servant said.

She glared at her Servant. Clearly she had wasted the past two months preparing a suitably ominous monologue with Berserker at her side. Illyasviel had even managed to squeeze in Yang's Berser-car pun, too, just to make her happy.

"Oh, is she another friend of yours?" Shirou asked his Servant.

"We're on the same team," she said. Weiss? She wore a white dress and had white hair, and oddly enough could have passed for an Einzbern if her eyes weren't blue. Maybe she _was_ an Einzbern summoned from the distant past. That would be ironic.

"What's up, Weiss?" Yang said. "I haven't seen you in like forever! Where's everyone else? I was starting to think I was the only one who made it."

"I'm touched," Weiss said.

"No seriously, I've been bored out of my mind since Illya here summoned me two months ago. I was promised a no-holds-barred beatdown, but so far I've just been lounging around with her in her various castles."

Weiss' jaw dropped. "You were summoned two months ago? You got _castles_? This guy summoned me an hour ago in his shack. The War had _literally_ started without me."

Yang grinned. "Did you shack up with someone you just met? Shame, shame, Ice Queen. I didn't know you had it in you."

Weiss gave her a disgusted look. "First of all, eew. Second of all …"

"It's not really a shack," Shirou said. "I mean, it's not a _castle,_ but—"

"Enough," Illyasviel said. "As much as I enjoy watching your heartfelt reunion, I'm going to need you to start killing people." _For_ my _heartfelt reunion._

"Oh, right, about that." Her Servant looked from her to Weiss. "I've never done this before, but I'll have to pass on the senseless violence." She shuddered. "Oh man, that felt weird."

Illyasviel smiled at her naïve, foolish puppet. "You'll 'pass?' You still do not understand the nature of our relationship, do you, Berserker? You act like you are my friend, my protector, but you are not. You are my Servant, and I am your Master. Let me show you what that means."

Yang rolled her violet eyes. "Okay. I think it's a bit past your bedtime, little lady. By six hours."

Illyasviel let out a sigh. "It's only the first night of the War, and I'm already forced to use a Command Seal."

"I like seals as much as anyone, but your ability to command them won't change your bedtime."

She blinked. "Is … is that really what you thought they were? No, Command Seals are consumable spells designed to force headstrong Servants to their Masters' will. I'm honestly surprised you didn't know that."

"It can do what now?" Berserker made a face. "That sounds pretty weird. Also, made up." She looked at Weiss.

"What are you looking at me for?" Weiss said.

"You're the one who read the manual."

"I _started_ reading the manual, but all of us read the 'Do Not Enter' sign."

"No, the sign said, 'Do not enter, this means you, _Qrow_.' Qrow did not come with us."

"My impression was that the warning was meant especially, not exclusively. Besides, I didn't even get through the first page before _someone_ said, 'I'm the Yang! Let's fight!'"

"First of all, I did not say that, Ice Queen. I said—"

"By the power of this seal, I command you: _**slaughter**_."

Berserker blinked. "Uh, no, I didn't say that either. I … oh. Oh boy. This feels really not fun! This feels …" Her body bent as Illyasviel's magic overpowered her, then she let out a cry that turned into a scream that turned into roar that turned into joy.

Illyasviel smiled. "A crazy rage monster," she said to herself. "Just like you promised."

WWW

Not good. No member of the team was strictly better than another, but they all had their own specialties. Weiss was a great supporting fighter, team face, and battlefield control—Yang was the best at hitting things really, really hard.

Still, Weiss favored a more elegant form of combat, so she had more surprises up her sleeve than Yang did, and she was faster, so—

Yang jumped into the air. And … she kept on going. "Um, Yang?" Weiss called up to her. "I'm down here, you know. If you break escape velocity, I'm going to be sorely … ah, there you are." It wasn't that she _wanted_ to fight Yang, but she didn't like being ignored either.

Yang fell screaming from the sky like a meteorite. Weiss dodged the blow easily. The crater, not so much. She stumbled to keep her footing. "Should have known. Even being mind controlled, the Yang I know would never pass up the chance for senseless destruction."

"RAAAAGH!"

"And yet no puns. I feel I should be upset that we're forced to fight each other, but honestly this could be worse."

"RAAAAGH!" Yang launched herself forward, far faster than she ever had before, and even with Weiss' reflexes, she still suffered a glancing blow, one that sent her flying through a fence.

"Ow."

"Uh, Weiss?" Shirou called after her. "Do you need help?

Was he still here? "No." The fence she had crashed through was the one to his house. She was in the same yard where she had fought Lancer.

"Because I feel like I should be doing something, except your Berserker friend looks …"

"RAAAAGH!"

"Yeah."

"You could try to fight me," Yang's tiny, creepy master said, stepping into view. "I think that would be entertaining."

"No!" Weiss said, standing up. "Shirou Emiya, if you want to impress me, then you just need to spend the next five minutes doing _absolutely nothing._ "

He hesitated. "Because you're confident you can handle this fight on your own?"

"Because I'm confident that you'd only get in the way."

He winced. Maybe that wasn't the nicest way she could have put it. Still, if he didn't want to be treated like a burden, he shouldn't have been one.

Yang came charging again, firing shots off her gauntlets with each step. Weiss could block or dodge those without too much trouble, but as soon as Yang got close …

Yang tripped when something hit her foot, covering it in ice, and Weiss jumped out of the way.

"Hey, Weiss! Yang's here! Isn't that great?"

 _Ruby._ There she was, standing on Shirou's roof, red cape billowing in the wind just like against Lancer. Déjà freakin' vu. "No, it isn't." Ruby coming back, on the other hand …

"Hey Yang! It's so good to see you again!"

"RAAAAGH!"

"Ha! Right back at you! Hey, have you met my master Rin? She has a finger that's also a gun. I'm not saying that I want to kidnap her when this is over and bring her back to Beacon, but I am saying that Team RRWBY rolls right off the tongue."

"RAAAAGH!"

"No, _RRWBY_. Say it. _RRWBY_."

"Ruby!" Weiss said.

"Almost. Roll your tongue a little bit." Ruby hesitated. "How come Yang isn't making a pun about how you have to roll your tongue to make it roll off your tongue?"

"Because she's being mind controlled. Her master has something called a Command Seal. Any advice on how to fight her?"

"I love seals! They're like fat water puppies. Um, sure. First of all, Yang hits really hard, so when she tries to punch you, don't let her."

"Okay."

"Also, her Semblance is triggered by anger, so don't hit her. That only makes her stronger."

"You're not giving me a lot to work with, here."

"And finally, you should never, under any circumstances, pull her hair. She hates that more than anything."

"And here I was planning to shave her bald."

"Well, now you know!"

"Any way to turn _off_ her Semblance?"

Ruby hesitated. "Well, it's powered by anger, and love conquers hate, right? So all you need to do is …"

"Please don't say what I think you're going to say."

"Throw puppies at her until she calms down!"

Weiss gritted her teeth. "Ruby, are you going to actually help me fight her? No, of course not. That would only make her stronger. Fine then. Go be stupid somewhere else, would you?"

"Okay, sure. I mean, it's not like if you die here you die in real life, right?"

"Hold on," Weiss said. "Do you _think_ that, or do you _know_ that?"

"Um … whoops, looks like Rin's fighting another Master, and boy is she losing hard. Good luck, Weiss!"

WWW

"No I'm not!" Rin yelled from a crater she was using as a barricade. Had Berserker made that? Ruby's C ranked Clairvoyance had managed to spot yet another Servant jumping over the skyline, and her A++ ranked Agility was enough to get both of them to the fight before Rin could say, "Hold on, let's think about this."

Still, she was glad they had come. With Saber distracting Berserker, Rin was free to kill off an opposing Master, one that she did not know personally or go to school with. In theory.

"But if you want to murder her, I'd be cool with that." What was with those birds? They were too fast to hit and could shoot back. Just one of them would be enough of a fight, but the Einzbern could create them at will.

Then the birds fused together to create giant, flying swords.

"Well, that's not good."

One flutter of rose petals later, the swords were shredded and Ruby was standing in front of her. "Seriously," she said, flourishing her scythe, "what's with all the swords? There are other weapons out there! Where are the nunchuck chainsaws or the taser claws?"

"Do you mind?" the red-eyed homunculus said. And she _was_ a homunculus. You didn't get that kind of raw magic power by genetic chance. "This is a battle between mages that you're interfering with, Servant. Go play with Berserker. We're almost done here."

"Hey!" Rin said. "No one orders my Servant around but me!" To be honest, she could barely do that. How had they ended up back here? They were almost home when Ruby decided that she wanted to say hi to her sister, but Rin wanted to go to bed, so they compromised and Ruby dragged her across the city to say hi to her sister.

"Besides," Ruby said. "Weiss is handling that fight."

" _No I'm not!"_ Weiss said from the other side of Shirou's house.

"And I'm not getting into a fight with my sister! That is, like, the dumbest thing you can do with her."

"Of course," Rin said, "killing a mage should be comparatively easy." The real question was if Rin should wait for Berserker—or Yang—to kill Weiss first. With Saber dead, Shirou would be out of the death match so Rin wouldn't have to kill him, and then with the Einzbern dead Berserker would slowly run out of mana until she disappeared. Two out of six gone on the first night. How long did it take her father to get this far?

"Wait," the Einzbern said. "I don't think we've been properly introduced. My name is Ilyasviel von Einzbern, and if you are Yang's sister, that must make you Ruby Rose. She told me a great deal about you."

Rin frowned. She had complete confidence in her Servant's ability to win this fight, but less in her ability to win an argument, and none at all in her ability to win a polite conversation.

"Aw, really?" Ruby said. "What did she say?"

"She said that you are a Huntress of unparalleled skill, born for the battlefield and at one with your weapon. Equally sharp is your mind, capable of inventing flawless plans in the middle of combat, and never once have you led your team astray."

"Aw, stop it," Ruby said, blushing scarlet. "Just shut your stupid face." _Oh, brother._

"That's not all," Illyasviel continued. "She says that your greatest strength is in your heart. You have not only the skill of a Huntress, but the soul of a hero. Never once has your courage faltered, nor your compassion failed. She said you would never, under any circumstances, kill someone in cold blood who couldn't fight back." She smiled. "I would be completely helpless against you in a fight."

"Alright," Rin said. "I've heard enough, and so have you, Ruby! She's trying to trick you! She may look like a little girl, but she's an Einzbern homunculus."

Ruby hesitated. "Um, I don't know that is. I know humus, and I know harmonica …"

"Artificial human!" Rin said. "A manufactured puppet. If she looks cute and innocent, it's only because her maker thought it might give her an edge against well meaning idiots like you."

"So … you're saying she's not a real girl?"

"I'm saying you can kill her without feeling bad about it."

"Not real?" Illyasviel said, smiling. "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us …" She glanced toward the sound of combat on the other side of Shirou's house. "Shall we not revenge?"

Rin rolled her eyes. "Oh please. The ability to quote Shakespeare does not make you a real person. Even actors can do that."

Ruby snapped her fingers. "I know! Let's test that!"

Illyasviel frowned. "Test what?"

"Tickle attack!" Ruby lunged at Illyasviel and tackled her to the ground. "Oochie coochie coo!"

"Ah! No! Stop that!"

"I got your feet!"

"Ah ha—no! Get o-off of me-hee-hee!"

"Not until you stop mind controlling Yang!"

"Never!"

Rin watched them for as long as she could, then sat down on a nearby bench and covered her face in her hands. Did her father ever have to deal with something like this when he fought in the last Holy Grail War? Did his Servant ever get in tickle fights to avoid having to kill people? Rin doubted that. Anyone her father had summoned would have conducted himself with dignity and class until the end.

WWW

Shirou watched Weiss fight, because that was all he could do. She fought like a dancer on a stage, channeling magic through her sword and moving so perfectly her actions looked choreographed.

"It wasn't enough," she said, "to have an honest, straightforward murder-fest. They had to make it _kinky_. Mind control. Who thinks up this stuff?"

Yang fought like a warzone. Weiss never did the same move twice. She dodged, she flipped, she cartwheeled, she froze the ground with ice to make Yang slip, held her back with black glyphs and blocked her with white ones. Yang responded by hitting harder, again and again and again with relentless, unyielding fury.

"RAAAAGH!"

Shirou wanted to help, but he knew he couldn't. He didn't have the skills with magic, the fighting experience, or even a weapon. He could reinforce his body, but not enough to stand up to Yang's crater-making shotgun gauntlets, and he could reinforce a stick or a pipe, but that hadn't done squat to Lancer.

Then Yang _caught_ Weiss' sword instead of punching it, ripped it from her grasp, and tossed it aside where it buried itself up to its hilt in a stone wall.

"Eep!"

Yang brought both gauntleted fists down on her head, and Weiss _crumbled_. She didn't move after that, but Yang kept pounding her, sending off flashes of light with each shot.

Shirou couldn't just watch this anymore—he needed to _act_. Weiss was worried about him getting in the way? Well, now she needed him to get in the way. All he needed was a weapon.

And he had one. Her rapier had landed just a few feet from him, and he pulled the sword from the stone feeling for all the world like King Arthur of Camelot. He charged at Yang, two-handing the sword and stabbing her in the back with every ounce of strength he had.

 _Ting!_

"Seriously?" His attack bounced off of her, not even serving as a distraction.

Yang struck Weiss' prone body again, shaking the earth with her raw might. Shirou stumbled, actually had to grab onto her to keep from falling, and then had what was possibly the dumbest idea of his life.

" _And finally,"_ Ruby had said, _"you should never, under any circumstances, pull her hair."_

Well, Ruby had seemed convinced that pulling Yang's hair would do _something_ , and it wasn't like there was anything Shirou could do right now to make the situation worse, was there? So he grabbed a fistful of flaxen gold, channeled his inner six-year-old, and pulled.

Yang raised her hand to punch Weiss again, but froze mid-swing. The air was already warm around her, now, though, she began to emanate heat like a furnace. Shirou was worried that the grass might catch on fire.

Then she turned to him, fixing his gaze with her blood-red eyes, and suddenly the grass seemed less important.

His life flashed before his eyes. In that moment, he remembered everything that had happened to him, everything he had done to bring him to this point. He remembered fire, and people screaming and dying as his world burned down around him. He remembered being pulled from the jaws of death, he remembered tears and laughter and light and dreams, all to bring him to where he was right now, and he finally understood the meaning of courage.

And it was worth it. He stood in front of an unstoppable force instead of hiding from it, and that was worth it, no matter what.

WWW

" _Berserker!"_ Illyasviel screamed out through the night. _"Come to me!"_

Yang felt the compulsion of the Command Seal fade and she let her rage subside. Her Mad Enhancement played with her Semblance in strange ways, and she'd love to test it some time—just not against her friends.

She knelt down next to Weiss to study her. She was still breathing. Good. If she wasn't, Yang would have … well, that didn't matter, because Weiss was fine. She got up and turned to Shirou Emiya, Illya's "evil" step-brother and apparently Weiss' Master. "Gutsy move, Red." She narrowed her eyes. "Don't try it again."

She ran over to the street to see how Illyasviel was doing. Yang wasn't _too_ worried; Ruby was with her, and if she had wanted Yang by her side she shouldn't have sent her into a blood rage.

In the end, the girl was fine. Well, she was laughing hysterically, missing both her boots, and had Ruby sitting on top of her, but it wasn't like she was unconscious in a crater or anything.

"Alright," Yang said. "Show's over. Get off."

"Yang!" Ruby said standing up. "You're coherent again!"

"And your crazy scheme worked perfectly. You might want to check on Weiss, by the way. Last I saw her, she looked like she needed a hug."

Ruby nodded. "On it." She vanished.

Illyasviel stopped laughing and began to pout. "Next time," she said, "I want you to kill her first."

"Yeah, you're gonna need a lot more than a Command Seal to make _that_ happen. Come on. Let's get you home." She picked Illyasviel up off the ground, helped her into her discarded boots, and set her on her motorcycle.

"This isn't how it's supposed to be," said a girl Yang didn't know. She was sitting on the sidelines, wearing a red coat. Ruby's Master, maybe? "There was supposed to be nobility. Challenges to try our souls. Not … _games._ "

"I know," Illyasviel said, fastening her helmet. "I was hoping someone would have gotten killed by now."

"I was hoping for Ruby to kill you."

"I really want to watch her die."

She nodded. "We should do this again sometime."

"Absolutely."

"Aw," Yang said. "See that? You made a friend."

"No I didn't."

"She really didn't."

"Sure, sure," Yang said, starting her engines. "That's what they always say."

WWW

A/n You know, I find myself making a lot more Shakespeare references in this story than I had originally planned. Also, the actor part I got from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead. I must be really cultured or something.

But enough of me patting myself on the back. Let me pat you guys on the back too. I wouldn't have written this without all the people reading and reviewing this, so I want you to know how much I appreciate what you do. Most of all, I'd like to thank Magery for editing these chapters and giving me feedback and letting me know when what I thought was Fate canon just wasn't so. Lastly, I'd like to thank Weiss for sending me her stat sheet, and hopefully I'll get Yang's in a chapter or two. Just like with Ruby's, this isn't set in stone, so if there's anything you feel was ranked wrong or if there's anything you think should be here that isn't, feel free to let me know.

Weiss

Class: Saber

Parameters:

Strength: C+  
Endurance: C  
Agility: A  
Mana A  
Luck C  
Noble Phantasm D

Class Skills:

Magic Resistance B  
Ride C  
Item Construction B Weiss can create glyphs at will, and may also summon past challenges to fight for her.  
Territory Creation D Weiss can cover the surrounding area with ice, hindering the movement of her opponents.

Personal Skills

Golden Rule C  
Double Summon C  
Alluring Nightingale B  
Magecraft B

Noble Phantasm:

Myrtenaster Anti Unit B-  
Schnee Glyphs Anti Unit Anti Unit (Self) B+  
Summon A-


	7. Supernatural Aid, Part One

Monomyth

Chapter Seven

Supernatural Aid

" _Once upon a time, a young Prince lived in a shining castle. One cold night an old beggar woman arrived, offering him a single rose if he would let her take shelter from the cold. But because of her ugliness, he turned her away._ "

Sorry about last night.

Are you kidding? I had a blast!  
Mad Enhancement is nuts!

Nearly killed Weiss, though.

Meh. She'll live.  
Can't wait to go against, you know, an enemy.  
Still, that Command Seal, though.

Want me to look into it for you?  
There has to be a way around it.

Sure. Let me know what you find.

WWW

One of the advantages to being a mage was that mages could get by on only a few hours of sleep without looking any worse for wear. At least, that was what Rin told herself the next morning as she walked to school. Ruby believed it, and hopefully Rin would start believing it too.

"Man, I wish I were a mage," her Servant said, trudging along behind her. "I can barely keep my eyes open."

"See, that doesn't make sense," Rin said. "If anything, a Heroic Spirit empowered by my Mana should be handling a late night better than I am."

Ruby yawned. "Yeah, but I didn't get a late night. I had an all night. I didn't finish making these bombs until it was time to get up."

"Wait, _these_ bombs? You mean _those_ bombs."

"No, these bombs." Ruby bounced her backpack on her shoulders, and if Rin hadn't been sleep deprived she would have noticed from the start that it was holding more than a few textbooks and her lunch. "Also, you're out of fertilizer. And baking soda."

"Hold on," Rin said, stopping. "Are you telling me that you're bringing bombs to school in your backpack? What's wrong with you? Were you raised by terrorists?"

"No, I was raised by … well, never mind who raised me. I thought that was the plan."

Rin put her hands on Ruby's shoulders. "Ruby, please. Tell me you see the flaw with your line of thinking. We caused a lot of collateral damage last night when you fought Lancer, and now you're coming to school with a suspiciously large backpack full of explosives."

Ruby frowned thoughtfully. "Are you worried that I didn't bring enough for everyone? Because I think I did. Well, there aren't enough bombs, but there's enough boom, so … you know, I get the feeling that your school's a bit different than mine."

Rin covered her face in her hands and tried not to scream. Instead, she forced a smile sweet enough to kill someone. "You know what, you're tired, so why don't you head back home and get some sleep? Just meet up with me as soon as school's out, and then we can blow stuff up to our heart's content, okay?"

"What if you need something before then?"

That was actually a decent point. Out of the six other Masters, two of them went to school with her. Shinji wasn't a mage at all and Shirou was barely a novice, but Servants were another league all together. Either of them would be foolish to try anything in a place as public as a school, but Rin wasn't going to bet her life on her enemies not being idiots.

"If I need you, I'll summon you again."

She didn't like putting herself in a position where she'd have to use a Command Seal, but out of the three Masters she knew about, the only one she could consider a threat was the Einzbern, and Berserker's Master had already used up one of her three. Besides, she could always bluff and say that her Servant was hiding in the perfect sniping position instead of snoring in bed with a stuffed animal.

WWW

The polite thing to do, Weiss decided, would be to let Shirou sleep, and Weiss considered herself a courteous guest. But she was also impatient, so she kicked him instead.

"Good," she said. "You're awake. I don't know if you have school or a job to get to, but _I_ have plans and _they_ don't involve waiting until noon."

His eyes opened and wandered around a fair bit more than proper. Abruptly, Weiss realized the implications of wearing a skirt while standing over someone lying on the floor, and there was absolutely no unseemly haste in the way she stepped back while waiting for him to become fully conscious.

Shirou sat up and blinked a few times. "How are you feeling?" he asked.

 _How am_ I _feeling?_ She looked away and metaphorically bit her tongue. He had a lot of nerve, asking her that right off the bat. Perhaps her fight with Yang the night before hadn't been her _best_ performance, but she'd like to see how patronizing Shirou sounded after Yang pounded _him_ senseless. "That," she said, "is beside the point. Focusing on the here and now, what are you doing today?"

"School?" He cleared his throat. "I'm going to school. Afterwards, we can get together and do … Holy Grail War … stuff."

Weiss did like a decisive man. Probably. She'd have to meet one first to find out. "There shouldn't be much danger until nightfall. Just in case, I need you to promise me that you'll stay safe until I'm around to keep you alive."

He seemed about to protest, even though her demands were hardly unreasonable. "I promise."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You say that, but somehow I suspect that you'll jump head-first into stupid the first chance you get."

"Hey! That's not true!"

"Really? And yet when I told you last night to stay away from Berserker no matter what, you went and did the exact opposite."

He hesitated. "Uh, well, there were extenuating… besides, you were unconscious for that! How do you even remember anything?"

Weiss held up her scroll. "Yang filled me in. Speaking of which, I'll need your phone number."

He blinked, staring at her scroll like he had never seen anything similar. "You have a magic smartphone!"

Weiss glanced at it, just in case it had turned into a mystical artefact when she wasn't looking. "No, I have a scroll."

He hesitated. "A magic scroll?"

She rolled her eyes. "A _scroll_ scroll, you dunce. Less questions, more numbers." Honestly, acquiring a boy's contact information shouldn't be this difficult.

"Right." He recited his phone number.

"I don't know if the technologies are compatible," Weiss admitted, saving it to her list of contacts, "but I can always buy a local version." They were called smart phones? Well, she was planning on testing out her Golden Rule skill anyway, so she might as well. "Now for the last order of business …" She looked down at him, still sitting in the nest of blankets that they had in place of beds around here. "Stand up. I'm not doing this to you while you're sitting down."

"You're not doing what to me?" he said, rising.

She took a deep breath, trying not to appear awkward. Shirou had proven himself to be an idiot, and would appreciate neither the practical nor cultural significance of what she was about to do. Thank goodness.

"Like I said, I don't trust you to not do something stupid, so I'm giving you a get-out-of-death free card, worth slightly less than you'll need it to." That was the way of these things. You always felt invincible when your own soul manifested itself in physical force to preserve you—until you realized that you weren't. She reached up and placed her hand on the side of his head, feeling his tousled, red hair and his surprisingly warm skin, and the two of them began to glow.

"Under frozen sky and forlorn dreams, of the shattered unbroken I release your soul."

She repeated the same words Winter had spoken to her, all those years ago, back when she was small, innocent, and didn't understand why she would need her Aura unlocked when no one wanted to hurt her. Still, that was what Winter had done before, and Weiss had followed her ever since.

She stepped back when the process was finished, feeling drained. "What was that?" Shirou asked. "Was that a spell?"

She rolled her eyes, feeling her inner sarcasm kill the moment. "Yes, Shirou, _magic_. As usual, that is the most precise and technical answer to your question. Or, if you would rather be accurate, I unlocked your Aura. You won't be able to use it offensively any time soon, but it should deflect a few hits on its own."

He seemed to grope around in his mind for the right word to describe the situation. "What?"

 _Ugh, this is going to take all day._ What would Winter do? _Oh, right._ Weiss took out her sword and stabbed him.

"Ow!" he said on reflex, but it didn't break the skin. He stared at his unscathed shoulder in confusion.

Good. Weiss had never unlocked anyone's Aura before, and if she had ended up impaling him she would have felt extremely foolish. "Understand?"

"No!" he said. "What just happened? How did… why… did you… what?"

Weiss sighed. "Alright, I'll show you once more, but pay attention this time." She drew back her sword.

"No, wait! I understand it now!"

She gave him a flat look. "Really?"

"Yes." He swallowed. "Completely."

"Good." Winter's method's always worked best. She sheathed her sword and turned around. "Now, I expect you have your own nonsense to get to. I'll see you after school."

WWW

It was surreal, walking to school. It was like Shirou had just woken up from a dream where he was back in his father's world, but then the sun rose, he got out of bed, and went back to his same routine.

And yet, little things stuck out to him along the way, things that didn't completely fit. Just the night before, he had seen Ruby and Lancer go nuts at his high school, and today, he saw bullet holes in the walls, gashes in the concrete, and an entire hallway looked shredded. A number of students would have had trouble with their lockers, if they could have gotten past the police tape.

He wasn't responsible for this, but he still knew that there were mages using his school—no, his _city_ as a battleground, and that made him feel complicit. He hurried through the hallway without talking to anyone and sat down at his desk in homeroom.

The bell rang, and Taiga Fujimura rushed in, skidding to a halt in the front of the room. "Ha! Perfect timing." She scanned the room. "Alright, looks like everyone's here. If you're not, please raise your hand. No one? Good." She jotted down the attendance. "So, announcements. We have some vandals doing some vandalizing, so if you're here, and I see you wrecking Kuzuki's car, I promise I won't say anything. That was a joke. Mostly. But yeah."

WWW

"Clearly," Issei Ryuudou, Student Council President of Homurahara Academy, First of his Line said, "this is the work of violent gangsters."

"Yes," Shirou, his current sidekick said. "Gang warfare. That explains everything."

Issei nodded. "I try to protect my school as best I can, but the truth is, it's a dangerous world out there, and that world is getting inside."

Shirou hesitated. "Inside the school _outside_ the world?"

Issei closed his eyes. As far as sidekicks went, Shirou was a terrific handyman, but he lacked the soul of a poet. "No doubt this is linked to the Little Red Riding Hood murders from last week."

"Oh, right, Ayako told me about those." Shirou paused. "Wasn't that ruled a murder suicide?"

Issei adjusted his glasses and shot his sidekick a dark look. "Yes. Rather convenient, no?"

He blinked. "Convenient how?"

Issei shook his head. "I'll see if I can get a copy of the police report and compare it to what happened here." He had watched enough crime dramas in his life to have at least a basic grasp of forensic science. "Meanwhile, I already have a prime suspect to investigate."

Shirou opened his eyes wide, clearly in awe of Issei's sharp intellect. "Y-you do?"

He nodded. "There are bullet holes in the walls, as well as damage that could only have been caused by a blade. Who do we know who is connected to this school, organized crime, and has a violent love of swords?"

"Uh …"

Issei waited for it to click.

"Um …"

 _Come on, you can do it._

"No one?"

Issei sighed. "Shirou, you disappoint me. Ms. Taiga Fujimura."

"Uh, yeah, I'm not really seeing the connection."

He held up a finger. "One, she is a teacher in this school. Can you deny that?"

"Not really, she's my homeroom—"

He held up a second finger. "Two, she is an avid kendo fanatic, and achieved the rank of fifth dan before being removed from the team. Can you deny that?"

He snorted a laugh. "No, she installed a dojo in _my_ house."

"Three," Issei said, holding up a third finger, "I have it on good authority that her family has yakuza connections."

Shirou hesitated. "Well, that is _technically_ true, but no one in her family has been involved at all since her grandfather … okay, her grandfather's still alive, but he's in a retirement home. Taiga actually took me to visit him once, and he couldn't tell us apart. Honestly, it's pretty sad."

"Regardless," Issei said, "this is too great a coincidence to ignore."

Shirou frowned, looking altogether too willing to ignore coincidences of any magnitude. "You know what? Taiga and I go way back. My dad used to give her English lessons, she used to babysit me; heck, right now she is technically my legal guardian, kind of like a godmother, and if you've seen the movie _The Godfather,_ they take that sort of thing very seriously in organized crime. So I'll… talk to her, and if she starts acting suspicious, I'll let you know. Meanwhile, you should get some sleep. You look tired."

 _Justice never sleeps,_ he thought. "I suppose you are better suited for this job than I. For the time being, I will…" He swallowed, dreading what he was about to consign himself to. "I will translate the school's insurance contract into something coherent." He did not envy himself, but the terms and agreements needed to be cross-referenced and the fine print needed to be magnified.

Shirou winced in a moment of empathetic suffering. "You're a good man, Issei."

Issei nodded in despair. "Before you leave, would you mind cataloguing the damages? I'm sure the insurance company will need to know that."

"Will do, Mr. President. Will do."

WWW

Shirou was the worst mage he knew. The only thing Kiritsugu had managed to teach him before he died was a bit of reinforcement magic, but Shirou used it in ways that no other mage would have thought of. How many mages out there used ancient, arcane knowledge passed down through generations to fix a sink?

Well, he didn't technically fix things with magic as much as figure out where they were broken. Professional mages probably whooshed their hands around and watched the pieces magically go back into place.

Still, Shirou made the most out of what he had. He pressed his hand against a wall and focused, channelling his mana into it, and could _feel_ where it was broken. He couldn't explain it, but it was as though the building knew what holes were windows and air conditioning vents, and which holes were damages. And Ruby's fight with Lancer the night before had left behind a lot of damages. Just as Issei had asked him to, Shirou tracked down every bullet hole, spear piercing, and scythe slash, snapped a picture of it, and moved on.

He also found something else. A rune, blood red, and hidden out of the way where no one would notice it. Or was it a glyph? It could be a ward for all he knew, and he was almost certain there was a difference between the three. Maybe he could ask Weiss to look at it? She had used some sort of rune or glyph magic the night before. Rin would probably know too, and for all he knew she had put it there. Right. It was probably best to leave it alone so she wouldn't be mad at him for interfering with… whatever she was planning.

Still, he had come across at least seven runes that evening, and that was only while looking for something else. He also found a surprising number of rose petals. He didn't know what they meant, but he imagined that if he followed them, they would lead him to something that was none of his business.

"You're here awfully late, Shirou," Rin said.

He turned around and saw her with Ruby standing next to her, both wearing school uniforms. "Oh, hi Rin. I'm just cataloguing the damages from last night for… insurance reasons." He had looked at the contract even less than Issei had, but he was sure it was important. "Issei asked me to."

He had expected contempt or disinterest. He didn't know Rin very well, but even from a distance he could tell that she strove for perfection, and something involving insurance coverage would surely be beneath her. He had _not_ expected amusement. The corner of her lips twitched, and she struggled not to laugh.

"What's so funny?"

"Oh, nothing. You just keep on doing what you're doing." She turned to leave.

 _Okay._ "What about you? What are _you_ two doing here so late?"

"Nothing."

"We're setting up bombs!" Ruby said brightly. "Want to help?"

"Ruby!" Rin snapped.

"What?" Ruby asked. "I brought enough for everyone." She reached into her backpack and pulled out what looked like a homemade explosive.

"You're bombing the school?" Shirou said. "Are you _insane_?"

"Do you… not like bombs?" Ruby asked, sounding hurt.

"I'd explain it to you," Rin said, "but you wouldn't understand. Also, it's none of your business."

"Of course it's my business!" Shirou said. "I go to school here!"

"Not for long you don't." She sighed. "Look, I know you're not a bigger picture guy, but this is a _war_. There is going to be plenty of collateral damage that you'll just have to accept."

"No! There is a huge difference between collateral damage and using a war to justify acts of terrorism."

Rin rolled her eyes. "No there isn't. That's why they're called _war crimes_ , because war is the only time you're allowed to do them."

"Oh," Ruby said. "So _that's_ what it means."

"No, that's not what it…" Shirou started. "Look. I have to be clear on this: there is no way I am letting you blow up the school."

Rin gave him a look that was no longer condescending, no longer patronizing, or even amused. Just cold. She stretched out her arm, pointed a finger at him—and fired a bolt of magical energy that shot through the air right next to his face. "I'm sorry, could you repeat that? I couldn't hear you over the sound of your _colossal_ _idiocy_."

He could smell the burnt air left over from Rin's spell, and he hesitated. _Maybe I should try the diplomatic approach?_ No. _Heroes_ did not negotiate with terrorists. "I'm not," he said, "going to let you—"

"And like that I've lost interest," Rin said. "Because I just remembered that you're in this deathmatch too. And I made you a promise."

She fired another shot at him, but Ruby turned out to be faster than a magic bullet and tackled him to the ground in the same amount of time it took for her to change from her school uniform to the red hood she had been wearing the night before.

"Careful, Rin," Ruby said. "You could have killed him."

Rin stared at her. "Yes. That was the promise I was talking about."

"But he's Weiss' Master, remember? If he dies, Weiss disappears."

"That's the point! I'm not killing him because he's annoying, I'm killing him because he's an enemy!"

"But Weiss is my friend."

Rin shrugged. "Shirou's my friend too, but you don't see me getting all teary eyed about him being brutally murdered right in front of me."

"We're friends?" Shirou asked. Maybe that _wasn't_ the right thing to take away from that statement, but still.

Rin shrugged again. "I'm using the term loosely. You'll notice that the definition also includes my enemies." She fired again, but Ruby blocked it with a twirl of her scythe. "Would you get out of the way? I'm trying to murder the competition." She glanced at him. "That's another term I'm using loosely."

"No. If you kill him, you'll feel bad, and I won't let you."

Rin glared at her. "You won't _let_ me? I've been hearing a lot of that recently, and I don't think you understand the nature of our relationship, _Servant._ Allow my to illustrate it in a way even you'll understand. _Archer! By the power of my Command Seal, I order you to_ _ **stay out of my way!**_ _"_

A wave of magical energy burst out of her so powerful that even Shirou could feel it, and Ruby began to tremble. "Oh, that feels weird, I really don't like this." Then, she stepped aside.

"Now get back to setting up explosives," Rin ordered. "I have a classmate to kill."

"Run little NPC! Save yourself!"

"I'm still not an NPC!" Shirou yelled, dodging another magic bullet. He ran anyway, but Rin was far closer to his level than Lancer was, and there was that Aura thing that Weiss had given him. If he played his cards right, he might come out on top.

WWW

Hey Weiss.

Hello, Ruby.

What you up to?

Shopping, mostly.  
I wanted to test out my Golden Rule skill.  
I might try out my Riding skill later. You?

Oh, not much.  
Rin wants to track down Caster after she kills Shirou.

WHAT?  
Stop her!

I can't.  
She Command Sealed me.  
Stay out of my way! Rawr!  
Felt icky.

Where are they?

Still at school.

Right.  
I'm on my way.  
Where's the school?

I'll check.

Ruby?  
Ruby?  
Ruby?  
Ruby?

I don't know.  
But the locals call it school.  
Maybe that will help.

AGSHIUEWOQTI  
Useless!

WWW

"You can run, but you can't hide!" Rin yelled.

"I'm not trying to hide, just run!" he said, turning down the stairwell.

"Well, you can't run forever!" Darn it, if she was going to get anywhere in the Holy Grail War, she _had_ to come up with better banter.

"Yes I can!" Shirou shouted back. "I was in track!"

At least the competition wasn't any better. "I don't think you understand how this works!" she said, firing a Gandr shot. She missed, though. Ruby had suggested she get a wrist-mounted laser scope a while ago, but that seemed tacky.

She chased him around a corner, hoping to see him running in a straight line away from her—a sitting duck, practically—but instead found nothing.

"Huh. I guess I shouldn't have given you that idea about hiding." No response. The hallway was lined with doors to classrooms, and Shirou could be lurking in any one of them. "You know, if you really don't want to fight me—and let's be honest, why would you?—then you could forfeit. Use all three Command Seals to sever your contract with Saber, and you're out of the game! Or, if you want to use just one Command Seal, bring her here. Take a moment, bypass the laws of physics, basic Master stuff."

"Interesting," Ruby said, appearing out of nowhere.

"Ruby?" Rin said, turning. "What are you doing here? I thought I told you to set up the explosives!"

"I did." She was holding a device, small flat and glowing, that was either a Noble Phantasm that she hadn't mentioned or a toy she was playing with. "Just finished."

Rin frowned. "What are you doing?"

"Texting. By the way, where are we?"

"What? We're at school."

"Yeah, but _where_? What's the address?"

"Why? Is it important?"

Ruby shrugged. "It might be."

Rin rolled her eyes. "Ask me after I'm done killing Shirou. I know he's in one of these classrooms…" The classrooms on the first floor. And they all had windows. Crap.

She charged through the first door, but instead of finding an empty classroom with an open window, she found Shirou holding a chair leg. He brought it down to bash her head in, but hesitated, as though a lifetime of being told not to hit girls came rushing back to him at the worst possible moment.

Rin hadn't been brought up being told not to hit boys, though—or anyone, for that matter. She was brought up to aim for the vitals, so she fired a Gandr shot through his chest before she had time to think.

Rin watched him lift off the ground and fall in a clatter of desks and chairs and… and she didn't know what to think. _I killed him._ It was brutal, it was inevitable, it was… it was what a mage would do. She just had to do that five more times and she'd win. Father would be proud _._

She took a deep breath and decided that she ought to say something. "One down, five to go," didn't seem appropriate, and "Better luck next time," was just dumb.

"You were dead from the moment you joined this War," she said, "but for what it's worth, I am sorry it came to this." _Should have forfeited last night when you had the chance. Idiot._

She turned to leave, but then a thought crossed her mind and she spun around. "Hold on, are you just _pretending_ to be dead?"

"Oh crap."

"They will never find your body!"

Shirou scrambled to his feet and jumped out the window. "I'm not sorry!"

"You should be!" She jumped through the window after him, wondering how he was still alive. Reinforcement magic? Sure. He made his shirt strong enough to withstand her attack, and was a craftier mage than he had let on. Still, he made one mistake. He should have struck when she let her guard down instead of run, and she wasn't going to give him a second chance to try again.

Outside she'd have to be more careful. If someone saw her casting spells… well, killing Shirou was all she could handle right now. She scanned the outside courtyard and spotted him—stepping out of the archery dojo, bow in hand.

"Do you know why I haven't called Weiss yet?" He had an arrow knocked, but the bow wasn't drawn or pointed at her.

"I'd flip a coin between idiocy and overconfidence."

"Because she'd kill you."

Rin considered that. "And?"

"And I don't _want_ you to die! I don't want anyone to die! I didn't join the Holy Grail war for some magic wish cup, I joined it to keep people from dying!"

 _So … idiocy_ and _overconfidence._ "This is a war, Shirou, not a fairytale. There _are_ no happy endings." Her father certainly had never gotten one, but she couldn't think about that now. She looked Shirou over, and noticed that he didn't bring a quiver. "You only have one arrow."

"I know."

Rin narrowed her eyes. She wasn't into archery, but she had a few friends who were. Ayako sometimes talked about the time when Shirou was on the team before Shinji had him kicked off out of pettiness, jealousy, and a terminal case of Shinji-ness. Back then, Shirou had been the best archer in the club.

Of course, they didn't practice on human sized moving targets in the archery club, and if he missed, then he'd have nothing left. Heck, even if he hit her, she had more than enough mana left to heal a small flesh wound, and he didn't seem the type to go straight for the kill, so all she had to do was—

A car crashed through the front gate and came speeding toward her. Rin had only a moment to reinforce the muscles in her legs before she had to jump over the white Mercedes that was trying to run her down. It was a convertible, and in midair Rin caught a glimpse of the girl with platinum blonde hair driving the thing.

 _Great._

Rin landed nearly gracefully, and the car came skidding to a halt. Weiss stepped out and tossed a pair of sunglasses behind her.

Shirou was the first one to break the silence. "You … got a car."

"Yup."

"Why?"

"I was bored."

"How?"

"I'm rich." Weiss glanced at Rin. "This girl giving you trouble?"

He hesitated. "Um, no?" He made an attempt to hide his bow behind his back.

"That's not very convincing. You need to work on that." She drew her sword.

"Hold on," Shirou said. "You're not going to kill her, are you?"

"Hold that thought."

Weiss made to attack, but instead of being stabbed, Rin felt herself be tackled by a rush of rose petals. "Careful, Weiss," Ruby said, standing over her. "You could have killed her."

Weiss raised an eyebrow. " _Really_? Do you mean that stabbing someone in the throat kills people?"

Ruby nodded seriously. "Yes."

"I don't believe you. I'm going to have to see this for myself."

Weiss stepped forward, and Ruby drew her scythe. It was a far more impressive weapon than Weiss' rapier, and taller than Ruby herself, but if it came down to a battle between Servants, Rin wasn't sure where they stood.

The Saber Class had the best overall stats, but Archers could take better advantage of their terrain when they had room to maneuver. Ruby didn't have that right now, not when she was shielding Rin. Fortunately, the Masters' ability also played a role in the fight, and Rin knew every support spell in the book.

Ideally though, it would come down to a battle between Masters. If Ruby could distract Weiss for two more minutes, Rin was sure she could end this game of tag and blow Shirou's head off.

At least, that was what Rin was thinking. Then she realized that the others were still chattering.

"I didn't call you here so you could kill her!" Ruby said.

"Wait a second," Rin said. "You _called_ her here? _You_ did?"

Ruby looked away guiltily. "Um, I mean, it might have _not_ been me."

"What were you thinking?" Rin demanded. "I thought we were on the same side!"

"Well, I just didn't want anyone to die."

"Finally!" Shirou said. "Someone gets it."

"Stay out of this, Shirou," Rin snapped. "The adults are talking."

"You know," Weiss said. "It doesn't seem like you two are getting along, Ruby. Maybe it's time for you to trade in your mage for one that's less of a pain in the neck."

"I don't _want_ another one, I want this one!"

"Then she shouldn't have tried to kill him."

"Oh, don't be stupid," Rin said. "If I _wanted_ to kill him, he'd be dead by now."

"You seemed pretty sincere at the time," Shirou said.

Rin grit her teeth. " _Again_ , Shirou, stay out of this."

"I mean, he has a point," Ruby said.

"Seriously? Whose side are you on?"

Ruby looked down. "Yours."

"Right. Anyway, I just thought that Shirou wasn't taking this War seriously, so I gave him a crash course in survival training. And he passed, so, you're welcome."

"See," Weiss said, " _that_ was a much more convincing bluff. You could learn a lot from her Shirou, like how to lie, or die young."

"Hey!" Ruby said. "No one dies today."

"I'm not letting someone try to kill my mage and just walk away. I have a reputation to uphold."

"Yeah? Well, if you want her, you'll have to go through me!"

Weiss stared her down, then took a stance.

Ruby looked at her, then followed suit. "So," she said, "it has come to this."

"So it has," Weiss replied. "Don't worry, you're an Archer. You'll have nearly a week before you need a replacement."

The air grew tense, neither Servant taking their eyes off the other, neither daring to make the first move. Then a high school student came running out the front door.

It was Ayako. "You guys have to get out of here!" she screamed. "There's a _vampire_ in the school!"

Weiss let out a sigh. "Oh, that's a relief—I mean, lucky you."

"I know, right?" Ruby said. "Hey, wanna go kill a vampire with me?"

"Beats killing each other."

WWW

They managed to convince Ayako to take them to where she had seen the vampire, if only to try to rescue the monster's latest victim.

"So me and Kaede—have you met her yet, Ruby? Kaede Makidera. So we were about to head home when we saw this thing that looked like a bomb. Crazy, right? I mean, who leaves a tacky, homemade bomb in the middle of the school?"

"Tacky?" Ruby looked down. She'd been up all night making those things! Sure, she hadn't been worried about style at four in the morning, but still…

"Anyway, we were arguing about what to do with it. I thought it was a dumb prank and wanted to toss it in the dumpster, but Kaede thought the bomb was legit and wanted to call a bomb squad or something. _Then_ this freakin' _vampire_ comes out of nowhere! And I don't mean she snuck up on us, I mean materialized out of nothing and started sucking on Kaede!"

Rin nodded thoughtfully. "What did the vampire look like? Are we talking Dracula? Nosferatu?"

Ayako considered that. "The sexy kind. She had purple hair that went down past her knees, and huge vampire boobs. I mean, I don't really pay attention to that sort of thing, but they were all over the place!"

"Right," Rin said. "Did you notice anything, um, distinctive?"

The five of them climbed the stairway to the second floor. "Distinctive? Her boobs wer—I mean, I remember she was wearing a blindfold. Kind of like… have you ever played Nier: Automata?"

"Near what?"

"Nevermind." Ayako glanced at Weiss and Ruby. "By the way, what's with the ballerina with the sword? And where'd you get that scythe?"

Ruby grinned. "The ballerina with the sword is my friend Weiss."

"Charmed," Weiss said.

"And the scythe?" Ruby said. "It's not just a scythe. It's also a—"

"Stage prop!" Rin said. "It's a stage prop. We were rehearsing for a play."

"Really? Which one?"

"Macbeth," Rin, Shirou, and Ruby said in unison.

"Huh," Ayako said. "Well, maybe your stage props can scare off the vampire."

 _Oh, my sweetheart's going to do a lot more than that!_

They found Kaede lying on the floor, with no sign of the vampire. Shirou set down his bow and hurried over to check her pulse. "She's still alive, but I don't feel good about moving her. We should call an ambulance unless… Rin, is there anything you can do for her?"

Rin shook her head. "Not unless you know her blood type."

"No, I mean with m—"

"Ayako, look out behind you!" Rin shouted.

Ruby spun around eagerly. Crescent Rose wasn't a wooden stake, but a few holes and dismemberments could ruin anyone's day. But instead of a vampire, she saw nothing.

Then Rin jumped on Ayako from behind, put her in a headlock, and began choking her.

"Rin!" Shirou yelled. "What are you doing?"

"Strangling Ayako, obviously," Weiss said. "She was bound to snap eventually."

"The vampire must be controlling her with her mind powers!" Ruby said.

"Hkgkrrg!" Ayako said.

"No!" Rin said. "Trust me on this, I know what I'm doing!"

"Okay." Ruby folded up her scythe and put it back.

Weiss shook her head. "You don't really inspire trust." She poked Rin in the back with her rapier. "Let go."

"Ow! No! I'm doing a thing! Ow! Stop that!"

"She has a point," Shirou said. "I hate to say it, but you do have a reputation for trying to kill people for no reason."

"Seriously? That only happened once!" Ayako stopped struggling and Rin set her down. " _Finally_. What I was _doing_ , by the way, was saving her life. The Mage Association tends to murder people who see magecraft, which you may remember, Shirou, so I'm going to make sure that they wake up convinced that they just had a weird dream. Also, seriously, Weiss? What is your problem?" She began casting a healing spell where Weiss had stabbed her.

"Where would you like me to begin?"

"The more I hear about the Mage Association, the less I like them," Shirou said. "But I apologize, Rin, I shouldn't have doubted you."

"No. You shouldn't have. Now grab the other one. We need to get the stupid innocent bystanders out of here before the stupid enemy Servant comes back."

"Hm." Shirou picked up Kaede and the two of them began dragging the two girls down the hall.

"Do you need help with that?" Ruby asked. "I mean, I don't want to brag, but I got C rank strength."

Rin grunted, trying to get a decent grip on Ayako. "No. You and Saber need to be ready just in case the other Servant shows up."

"Right," Shirou said. He had managed to maneuver Kaede onto his shoulder. "The blind vampire?"

"What?" Rin said. "That Servant could be—oh crap, stairs—that Servant could be anyone. Drinking people's blood doesn't make you a— _oof_ —a vampire in this war. Any Servant can do it."

"We can?" Ruby asked. "Eew!"

"Why, pray tell, would a Servant stoop to that level?" Weiss asked.

"Extra mana. Only mages have enough to spare—everyone has some they can't."

"So pretty much we're _all_ vampires."

"Are we going to grow giant vampire boobs too?" Ruby asked, feeling frightened.

"What? No. You're not vampires, you don't get vampire boobs, and you don't need to drink blood. You only need mana, and if you have to, you can get mana from blood. That's it. No more questions."

"How is this War legal?" Shirou asked. "The more I hear about it, the more it sounds like something invented by a group of sociopaths."

"No. More. Questions."

They carried the girls outside and loaded them into the back seat of Weiss' car. "Cool car, by the way," Ruby said.

"I have a ride skill. I figured I might as well use it."

"What are you going to name it?"

Weiss shook her head. "I'm not doing that."

"If it were a bike, you could name it Ice-cycle." Ruby snapped her fingers. "Got it! Snowball."

"Again, I'm not doing that. Also, Ice-cycle? That sounds like something that Yang would come up with."

"Well…"

"No more," Rin said. "We've spent enough time here. Ruby, go through the school to make sure that there isn't anyone left in there."

Ruby nodded. "Got it."

"And then light the fuses and blow it up."

"Wait, what?" Weiss said.

Ruby grinned. "I've been looking forward to this all day."

WWW

Ruby ran back into the school before anyone could stop her. "You know, you never did explain why you're blowing up the school," Shirou said.

Rin glanced up at him. "Hm? Yeah I did."

Shirou shook his head. "No, you didn't."

"I'm pretty sure I did."

"No, you just started throwing magic at me until Weiss showed up."

"Huh. Well, I have a good reason for it."

"Okay …" He waited for her to elaborate. "Which is?

"Which is what?"

"The reason! The reason why you're blowing up the school!" She had been right about strangling Ayako and she had saved his life the night before, so he was _trying_ to assume that Rin wasn't psychotic, but _darn it_ she was making it difficult.

"Oh. The place was a death trap. Someone put runes all over the place that would suck the life force out of everyone in the area."

"Oh. Oh! So you were just trying to save everyone."

" _Exactly_."

"Why didn't you just destroy the runes?" Weiss asked. "It can't be that hard."

Rin glared at her. "Destroy them? Easy. _Find_ them? Good luck."

"I found seven of them," Shirou said. "How many are there?"

"You found _seven_? _How_?"

"I… I don't know. I just put mana into the wall and felt around." He thought he should have put more magic jargon into that sentence, but his father had never gotten around to teaching him anything useless.

Still, Rin seemed impressed. He had never seen her impressed before, and honestly it felt weird. "So… you mean…"

"We don't _need_ to bomb the school."

Just then, Ruby came walking out the front door, and the school exploded behind her. "Doing the slow walk away from an explosion without looking back," she said, smiling. "Man, I love being me." She looked at the three of them and frowned. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Weiss said. "We're just… jealous of your natural style."

Ruby began blushing furiously. "Aw, shut up. Get in the car, you."

"So, now what?" Shirou asked. "Do we drop Ayako and Kaede off at the hospital? Or do you need to cast a spell on them first?"

"I can cast my spells on the way," Rin said. "But first, I need to have a word with you. Alone. Don't worry, we have a few minutes before the police and firefighters arrive."

Oh. Right. Shirou did _not_ want to explain this to the authorities. Still, he followed Rin into the archery dojo (which was still standing and entirely untouched) to see what she had to say.

"So," Rin said. "I've been doing some thinking, and I've decided that we should team up."

Shirou blinked. "What?"

"Oh, don't give me that. We both know that if it weren't for me, you'd be dead several times over."

"No, I'd only be dead once, because after that people would stop killing me. How do I know you won't just kill me after we take out the other five?"

"Oh, I will definitely kill you after we take out the other five competitors," Rin said. "There can be only one, and you're looking at her. And let's be honest, I can't afford to fight you, and your Servant, and _my_ Servant this early on in the War. But I won't stab you in the back—if you like, I can even throw in a twenty-four hour grace period after it's down to the two of us so you can put your affairs in order. If you even make it that far."

"You are _very_ casual about killing me."

She rolled her eyes. "I've been preparing for this War my whole life, so I'm sorry if I take it more seriously than you."

"I take death as something you don't come back from," he said, a bit more sharply than he intended. "That's as serious as it gets."

She hesitated. "Okay. I can respect that. But _you_ will notice that I have deliberately avoided killing people not involved. Can you say the same about any of the other Masters or Servants you've met so far?"

No. There was Lancer, who tried to kill him for seeing too much, whoever drank Kaede's blood, and whoever put the death runes all over the school. They… could have been all the same person, or they could have been half of the other Servants. In comparison, Berserker and her Master were practically benevolent for waiting until after he had joined the War to start trying to kill him.

"You have a point. So how does this work?"

"First, we don't attack each other."

"Anymore."

She rolled her eyes. "Are you going to hold a grudge about that the entire War?"

"I might, yes."

"Second, we coordinate attacks. If a Servant fortifies a location, they could be too strong for anyone to fight them alone."

"Makes sense."

"And third, we share all relevant information. If you find out the identity of any of the other Masters or the true names or Noble Phantasms of the other Servants, I need to know about it, and I'll do the same for you."

"Alright, I can agree to that."

"Good. Now, the first person I need you to investigate is Saber."

Shirou blinked. "But that's my Servant."

"Yes, I know. Look, I know you're new at this, but this is the fifth Holy Grail War my family has been a part of, and I know what to expect. I also know that the Holy Grail War isn't something a few Heroic Spirits do with their friends when they're bored, and I don't care what they told us last night. Something is not right about those two or their Berserker friend or whoever number four is supposed to be, and in this game that sort of thing usually gets people killed."

He frowned. "I don't feel comfortable spying on my own Servant. Besides, I wouldn't even know what to look for."

"Exactly! She'll have her guard down, so she might let something slip. Look, all I know is that the two of them—the _four_ of them—are planning something, are _hiding_ something, and I won't rest easy until I find out what it is."

"Hey, Weiss," Ruby said from outside the dojo. "They've been in there for forever. What do you think they're doing?"

"I don't know. Probably making out."

"Eew! Hey, Rin! Stop making out with Shirou! We can hear you. You sound like, ' _Melooshloohalhaomphsh!_ '"

"Lovely impersonation, Ruby. You have clearly had a boyfriend at some point in your life."

"… so, are we done here?" Shirou asked.

"Yes, we're done."

They left the archery dojo and found what was left of the school still burning merrily to the ground. Shirou found himself getting into a car with Rin Tohsaka, an adorable terrorist, a magical girl with a sword, and two unconscious teenage girls—not at all how he imagined his first day of the Holy Grail War would end. But, he figured, it could have been worse.

WWW

The first day of the Holy Grail War could not have gone worse. Not for Shinji Matou, at least, and his was the only opinion that mattered.

His plan had been perfect in everything but execution. He had joined the War as a Master without the Mana his Servant needed. Grandfather could have given him more than enough with just a fraction of his vast reserves, but no, not for him. It wasn't as though an unlimited wish and _Shinji's own life_ were on the line. No: if the backup heir to the Matou bloodline was going to win this war, he'd have to do it on his own.

So what if he didn't have enough Mana for his Servant? He'd just take it from those who did. His classmates led worthless lives, but put together, their lifeforce might be worth something. And if the trap caught Rin, killing the representative and last living member of the Tohsaka bloodline, then he would prove once and for all that you didn't need to be a mage to matter.

You only needed to be a Matou.

Then the school blew up. Seriously, who _did_ that? Who thought like that? _Intelligent_ people didn't go straight for the nuclear option when they saw a trap; they planned a trap around the trap so he could plan a trap around their trap around his trap, then they could use his trapped trapped trap as bait for their trapped trapped _trapped_ trap and so on until one of them slipped up in their fatal game of chess.

Instead, he hid in the forest and watched his dreams go up in smoke.

"There were two of them," Rider said softly. "Tohsaka and another. Shirou Emiya, I believe."

Shinji looked up at that. "Ridiculous. Shirou isn't a mage."

Rider didn't answer, but the implication was clear. Shinji wasn't a mage either, and he was in the War. Could he use this? Rin had clearly picked him up as an extra minion knowing that he would be too stupid to know better. _Well, Tohsaka, two can play at that game._ Besides, he and Shirou were old friends.

"What Servant did he summon?"

"Saber, I believe. She carried a sword and possessed the Ride skill."

Saber. A good guess, but not necessarily certain. Still, an alliance between two of the knight classes? Troublesome. But if he could convinced Shirou to switch sides, they could lead Rin into a trap, kill her Servant, and then… yes, this could be even better than sucking her dry in the Bloodfort Andromeda.

He began to plan his new victory when he turned around, only to find a girl dressed as a shrine maiden leaning against a tree and reading a book.

"How long have you been standing there?" he demanded. Rider hadn't materialized, so all she would have seen was Shinji… talking to himself. A bit embarrassing. Besides, the girl was rather pretty with her long black hair. A seven at least. Still, he should have been more alert. You couldn't be Shinji Matou without attracting a few stalkers.

Though, why hadn't Rider noticed anything?

"Since chapter seven. Before you ask, I'm not here to kill you."

"Why would I assume… who are you?"

She turned a page. "I'm sure one of you two can figure it out."

Without warning or permission, Rider materialized. "No Master would come without her Servant, and only a single Servant lacks the presence of one—Assassin."

Shinji's blood went cold. "You let Assassin sneak up behind me without warning? What's wrong with you, Rider? She could have killed me!" Assassin was the weakest class and couldn't beat any Servant in a straight fight. It was, however, the best at killing enemy Masters, and in fact that was the only way the Assassin class could be played.

"I already told you, I'm not here for that," Assassin said. She had yellow eyes. He couldn't see even a knife on her, but Servants could summon their weapons at will. "I'm here to offer you an opportunity. Currently, you have no plan, no mana, and no friends."

"I can make more friends." And he had a plan, or at least the beginning of one.

"Yes, and that is what my Master would like to speak to you about. Alliances are forming, and loners like yourself may soon discover new and exciting ways to die. Four of the seven have already been seen working together, and you stand among the remaining three."

Shinji raised an eyebrow. So that was Archer and Saber, and … two others. He had Rider, and Assassin was right in front of him, so that left Lancer, whom he had already fought—spending most of Rider's initial reserves—Caster, whom he knew nothing about, and Berserker, whom no sane man would touch with a ten foot pole. Assuming that Assassin was telling the truth, and that Lancer and Caster were sane, then they had already teamed up, so Shinji was left between forming an alliance with the weakest class or the strongest.

"You have my attention," he said, "but what can you offer me?"

Assassin shrugged. "What can you offer anyone else? You have no mana, and every fight you get in leaves your Servant weaker. Even if she continues to gorge herself on people's blood, she'll soon end up weaker than your average mage. My Master, however, is a mage of unparalleled power, and if you go to her, your various inadequacies will become obsolete."

Inadequacies? He grit his teeth, but her offer was one he could not ignore. Fighting without power was a challenge, perhaps even one worthy of his family name, but power itself? He yearned for it, _longed_ for it, for the ability to simply wave his hand and watch his enemies fall.

Besides, in a fight between Rider and Assassin, he'd put his money on Rider.

"Where is this Master of yours?" he asked.

It was a trap, he expected. Assassin hadn't killed him when she had had the chance, but that just meant that the trap needed him alive. Still, he would walk into Assassin's Master's trap, and use her trap to make his own trap, and if Assassin and her Master put a trap around his trap around their trap, then he'd just put a trap around their trap around his trap around their trap … and he was back in the game.

WWW

A/n You know, if I get much further in the story, I won't be able to rely on the abridged version, which I confess I've watched a lot more than anything canon. I'll have to come up with, like, original ideas or something!

Thank you Magery for proofreading this, editing this, and pointing out every time I spelled Ayako as Ayoko, and thank you to my many readers for leaving reviews, letting me know what you thought.

Finally, despite what my characters have done, I do not condone blowing up schools. Or vampirism. Don't drink blood, people. There are other ways to get Mana.


	8. Temptation, Part One

Monomyth

Temptation, Part One

" _His sons and daughters, who had been uneasy at his long absence, rushed to meet him, eager to know the result of his journey which, seeing him mounted upon a splendid horse and wrapped in a rich mantle, they supposed to be favorable. But he hid the truth from them at first, only saying sadly to Beauty as he gave her the rose: 'Here is what you asked me to bring you. Little you know what it has cost.'"_

Hey, Yang, what's up?

BORED.  
Illya's been familiar-stalking people all day.  
I've been waiting for something to charge the castle and try to kill us.  
No luck.  
You?

I blew up a school today.

LUCKY!  
Why?

It was a death trap.  
But don't worry.  
I'll build them a new one before we leave.  
With automated gun turrets.  
So this sort of thing will never happen again.  
And I found out something about the command seals.

Ooh, shiney.

Masters only get three.

Nice.

WWW

Rin had never liked enchantments. She was good at them, of course—there wasn't a school of magic that she didn't excel at—but enchantments had always seemed insubstantial. They stank too much of mysticism and charlatans who tried to sound like a haunted house while waving their hands around a snow globe and telling your future.

No, she prefered good, honest magic, which was all about burning stuff down or blowing it up. _Oh wow,_ she thought. _I guess that's why I summoned_ her.

Her, or she, rather, was waiting outside in the hallway while Rin sat next to Ayako. The best way for them to keep their stories straight was for Rin to weave an intricate web of lies and for Ruby to stay as far away from it as possible. Rin cast her spells to dull Ayako's and Kaede's memories, and waited for them to wake up.

Ayako finally began to stir. Rin smiled at her, then remembered that she was trying _not_ to frighten her, and stopped.

Ayako opened her eyes and blinked a few times. "What happened?"

"I have no idea. I found you lying outside the school after it blew up."

She sat up. "What? The school blew up?"

Rin nodded. "There was a massive explosion and everything. I don't know if there was a gas leak or a terrorist attack, but I'm just happy you're still alive." She hesitated. "Do you remember anything?"

"Well, I had a weird dream, but …"

"But it probably isn't important."

"But it was so vivid, it almost seemed real."

"It's safe to say it's not. Especially if there were sexy vampires involved."

"There weren't, but I remember a Shinigami that kept on eating my cookies, and I was like, 'Hey! Stop eating those!' and it was all, 'No! Mine!' Then it fell into this puddle of black goo, and then the goo came up to me and asked me to join the archery club."

Rin stared at her. _Once again, your spell has worked perfectly._ "I think that everyone has had that dream at some point. I hope you get better soon."

After that, she left to check on Kaede. Her dream, if it meant anything, was about DBZ characters headbutting each other until they turned into a pile of coins. When she was done, Rin found Ruby sitting in the waiting room, playing on her Scroll.

Rin smiled benevolently until she reached whispering distance. "Put that thing away!" she hissed. "Never use Noble Phantasms or magical items in public."

"But it's not magical. Everyone at Beacon has one."

"Common technology from the Throne of Heroes counts! Put it away because I told you to."

Ruby pouted, but put the Scroll in her pocket. No one else seemed to notice, at least. She handled the device like it was nothing out of the ordinary, so others assumed she was right.

Still, keeping magic a secret put Rin at a disadvantage. It was starting to look like most of the other Masters would happily murder the witnesses if they bothered to keep mage law at all, and Rin had to waste some of her precious Mana and hours of her time to clean up their messes.

On the other hand, if her opponents wanted to leave her a trail of anemic breadcrumbs, then she would happily follow them home.

"So, what's the plan?" Ruby asked, walking after her out of the hospital.

At this stage in the War, information was key. They had already encountered three of the other Servants, and they knew where three of the Masters were staying. Rin could spend the evening stalking Shinji, but that would require hanging around his creepy old house, and more ridiculously, treating him like a threat.

Rin would love to know where Lancer was staying, but she didn't know where to look, and that left Assassin and Caster. Assassin would be even harder to find than Lancer, but Caster … Casters fortified their territory, so they couldn't hide. They couldn't even run.

WWW

The Holy Grail War was technically more important that cooking, but far less urgent. Everyone knew that you couldn't be a Hero of Justice on an empty stomach, and his efforts to get dinner ready had nothing to do with impressing Weiss with his culinary skills.

"On the bright side," Weiss said, watching him work, "you'll have school off for a while. A deathmatch should always take precedence over all other obligations."

 _How did the basil get into the spice cabinet? With how often we use it, it goes on the spice rack._ It was probably Sakura. He loved her like a sister, but she had strong, silent views about how to best organize _his_ kitchen. "Hm? Yes."

"You are hearing me, but you don't seem to be listening."

"What? I am. Have you ever had chilled ochazuke?"

"Never heard of it," she said, sounding satisfied in her ignorance. "I wouldn't trust Rin as an ally, but I doubt she'll try to attack you again. Soon."

"That's good. It's green tea over rice with pickles, salmon, scallops, and wasabi. Um, it's better than it sounds."

"They always say that. Do you know why Yang's mage wants you dead?"

"Not really, no. I'm usually really good with kids."

"It seemed personal, but when I asked Yang about it, she just changed the subject. With puns. Really bad puns."

"That's weird. Do you have a salad preference?"

"No. If you think of anything, let me know. As much as it pains me to say this, Rin seemed to know a few things about the girl's family, so you may need to ask her for … help."

"That doesn't sound so bad." He just needed to give her a call … he didn't have her phone number. So he'd knock on her door … wherever she lived.

The doorbell rang.

Weiss looked at him. "Are you expecting anyone?"

He shrugged. "It might be Rin. We are sort of working together now."

The two of them walked to the front door, and Weiss drew her sword.

"What are you doing?" Shirou asked.

"Being prepared."

"Weiss, you can't answer my door with a drawn sword!"

"You seem to enjoy telling me things I can't do, and you haven't been right yet."

"What if it's the mailman? Or one of my non-magic friends?" He still had those, people who _weren't_ involved in ancient, supernatural death matches.

"Then I'll pass myself off as charmingly eccentric."

Well, she'd get along with Taiga. Not that Taiga ever knocked. He opened the door and hoped for the best.

"Why hello Shirou, my dear friend," Shinji said, smiling like a used car salesman. "It feels like ages since we had the chance to speak. May I come in?"

Shirou glanced at Weiss, who was standing behind the door. "This isn't exactly a good time."

Shinji nodded. "I understand. The Holy Grail War is terribly demanding. But I promise you, I will make this worth your time."

Shirou's eyes widened. " _You're_ in this too? What's next—is Taiga going to turn out to be in charge of Lancer?"

Shinji gave him a scornful look. "Hardly. The Matou family is one of the original three houses that created the Grail. When I noticed you in the company of Rin Tohsaka, I assumed that she would have informed you of the basics, but clearly she has opted to keep you as her witless lacky. I will ask you once more, may I come in?"

He hesitated, but only for a moment. "Yeah. Sure. I was just getting dinner ready."

WWW

"Well, Shirou, that was excellent. No one makes chilled ochazuke like you do."

"Why didn't your Servant join us?" Shirou asked. "I could have made enough for four."

Shinji shrugged. "Servants don't need to eat, and I have her dematerialized to conserve Mana. As pleasant as they are to look at, keeping Servants physically present all the time is a waste of resources." He sent a dismissive, calculated glance towards Weiss without meeting her eyes.

 _Oh, so we're playing that game._ Shinji had history with Shirou and would rather deal with him than her, so he demeaned Weiss to convince Shirou that he was the authority in their relationship. But, by accepting Shinji's views, Shirou would also place Shinji above himself on the hierarchy. Now would be the perfect time for Shirou to reject Shinji's assumptions, and remind him who came to whom for help.

"You can dematerialize?" he said to her instead. "I had no idea."

 _Idiot._ Minus one.

Weiss gritted her teeth. "What Shirou was trying to say, ineffectively, was that if you wish to work with us, then we will need to meet with the member of your partnership that actually matters in a fight."

Shinji looked at Shirou in an effort to maintain control—it didn't work—and sighed. "Well, that _was_ a pleasant meal, but fine. Let's talk business. Rider, say hi to these nice people."

A woman appeared at his side out of nowhere. No, not out of nowhere; she had always been there, just … dispersed, though still focused on that point. Weiss had watched Lancer vanish the night before, but now that she had seen the process in reverse, it wouldn't catch her by surprise again.

That, however, was a minor issue compared to the woman with long, purple hair, a blindfold, and a pair of breasts that one might describe as vampiric, given the way they kept trying to suck everyone's gaze. Weiss smiled.

"Uh, Shinji?" Shirou said gently, but more coldly than before. "I don't know if you already know about this, but earlier today Ayako told me she saw someone matching your Servant's description attacking students and drinking their blood."

Shinji raised an eyebrow. "Oh? And was this before or after you blew up the school?"

Technically, that was Ruby, but to hide behind technicalities would be to show weakness.

"Before," Shirou said. _Plus one._ He had soared to the exalted heights of zero. "Now answer the question."

"You didn't ask me a question."

"Well … then answer the question I _didn't_ ask."

He shrugged. "Fine. I've been supplementing my Servant's Mana reserves with blood donations. But let me ask you something, Shirou. Did she kill anyone?"

Shirou hesitated. "Not that I've heard of."

"She hasn't. And if you understood how zealously the Mage Association guards its secrets, you would know what risk I'm taking by sparing witnesses."

"You know, I have wondered about that," he admitted. "I haven't met the organization yet, but they seem terribly okay with killing innocent bystanders, and the more I hear about them, the more they seem like the bad guys."

 _Needlessly sidetracked. Minus one._ "More on point," she said, "what do you want? An alliance? An exchange of information? What?"

Shinji rolled his eyes and gave Shirou a look. "Is she always this much fun, or is she usually worse? No, that's a valid point. This afternoon, I was approached by none other than Servant Assassin, who wanted to form an alliance with me. Or so she claimed. I would say there's a better than even chance I'll end up stabbed in the back within five minutes of agreeing. So I thought to myself—who do I know who wouldn't stab me in the back if his life depended on it?"

"And you came to me?"

"And I came to you. Now, I know you're already in an alliance with Rin, and I wouldn't want to intrude on that, but I'm sure you can see the prudence to not locking yourself into anything this early in the war. If you come with me tonight to meet with Assassin, as an insurance measure, then if the alliance works out, I'll be in a position to help you out later on."

"And if it's a trap," Weiss said, "then it will be a trap with two Servants instead of one." Though she suspected she already knew who Assassin was. This could grow interesting.

WWW

"So, what did you think?"

Weiss shrugged. "You've known him for longer than I have."

They had left Shinji in the kitchen to "conference." Weiss' word, not his. "I've gone to school with him for a few years now, and … I'd trust him about as far as I can throw him. He's always been able to tell you what you want to hear. We used to be good friends, but he tends to treat his friends more like pets than people, and sometimes even stuffed his pockets with candy bars to hand out like dog treats."

Weiss gave him an odd look, and Shirou decided that he didn't need to have brought that up. "I see."

"Of course, there is a huge difference between lying to someone to get a date or taking advantage of someone's generosity to clean the dojo, and luring someone into a trap to murder them in cold blood. I can't imagine anyone I know from school doing that."

"Except for Rin."

He shook his head. "No, she's always been very up front about her desire to kill me."

"Her one redeeming quality."

"Then there's Sakura. She's his little sister. You haven't met her, but she comes over now and then. She's a sweet girl, there's not a mean bone in her body, and she can make spring chirashizushi like nobody's business. Shinji could be walking into very real danger with this deal with Assassin, and if anything happened to him, I don't know how she'd take it."

"I see," she said again. "So, you want to blindly follow him on the off chance that he _isn't_ going to stab us in the back at the first opportunity just so _he_ doesn't get stabbed in the back at the first opportunity."

"Uh, yes."

"Interesting. Now, here's another idea. How about, hear me out here, we kill Rider as quickly and quietly as possible. If he's having her eat people for Mana, then I doubt she has a whole lot. If we end up destroying this place in the process, then we can just move into one of my other houses."

"Wait, you bought a house?" Shirou blinked. "Wait, you bought _houses_?"

She shrugged. "It's a buyer's market right now. Don't interrupt. Then we take Shinji, whom we did _not_ kill, and beat Assassin's location out of him. In the end, he'll be alive, so his presumably sweet sister will be happy, Rider will be dead, so innocent bystanders still with blood in their veins will be happy, and we'll have a solid lead on Assassin, so I will be happy. What do you think?"

He hesitated. "I kind of like my idea better."

She scowled, and though she didn't say another word to him as the four of them climbed into one of her cars, he heard her mutter something under her breath that sounded like, "Negative three."

WWW

"Knock, knock." Yang punched the door down with the same cheerful abandon that she lived her life. She looked at Illyasviel and shrugged. "Well, the door's open. I guess we'll just let ourselves in."

"All the lights are off," Illyasviel said. She looked at Yang suspiciously. "You didn't warn them or anything, did you?"

"No, but we did try exactly the same thing last night, and they might be crafty enough to plan around that. They're probably having a sleepover with Ruby and … what was her name again?"

"Tohsaka."

"Toe-taco, right. We could crash their slumber party if you knew their address, but then we'd have the same issue of being outnumbered two to one like last time." She wandered into the kitchen and peered into the fridge. "Huh. As far as bachelor pads go, your evil step-brother seems pretty domestic." She pulled out a jar of pickles. "Want one?"

Illyasviel shook her head. "We could wait here and lay a trap for him, but that would require us to be quiet and subtle and …" She glanced at the shattered pieces of the front door. "No."

"We _could_ just go out for a night on the town," Yang suggested. "See the sights, go clubbing, if we're lucky have a rematch with that Lancer Servant. There aren't a whole lot of guys who can pull off spandex, let alone like _that_. I think his abs had abs."

Illyasviel looked around her brother's home. It was small, dark, and lonely. Even with the lights on, there was an emptiness here that wouldn't go away. Or maybe she had brought that with her. "Is that what you want, Yang?" she said softly.

"Well, sure. That's what this gig is all about, right?"

That was debatable. Everyone joined the War for their own reasons, ranging from the answer to life, the universe, and everything to family honor. That was what Grandfather wanted—to win and fulfill the purpose of his creation, having long ago lost sense of the reason behind it. As for Illyasviel herself, she'd come for her brother.

"I know you don't like to think about it," she said, "but I'm not going to live for very long. Homunculi are not built for longevity, and as the vessel of the Holy Grail, the more Heroic Spirits I receive, the less I will be able to function as a person. I'm not going to see the end of the War, but that's why I summoned you. The Berserker class cannot be controlled. It only needs to be unleashed. After three or four Servants are dead, you'll be free to do whatever want, and I hope you win. But before that … before that, I _need_ to finish this thing with my brother."

Yang let out a sigh. "Well, shoot."

WWW

"So, what's your riding skill?"

Weiss kept her eyes on the road. "None of your business."

"It's high enough to drive a car, so, what, D? I prefer magical beasts myself, but I doubt a Saber could handle one."

Weiss tried to come up with a better comeback than, 'Your mom's a magical beast,' failed, and said nothing.

"You were supposed to turn there," Rider added.

"What?" She made a U-turn. "You're supposed to tell me that _before_ the turn, you know."

"I did. Five minutes ago."

"That's not … look, do you want to drive? Because if you do, just say so."

"I would, actually."

"Well … too bad. It's my car, so I get to drive it. You can stick to navigating and being a lousy back seat driver, which I can only assume is A rank for you."

"Would I feel less carsick if Rider were driving?" Shinji asked.

"You … don't want to get involved," Shirou said.

"No," Rider said. "But we'd get there faster."

"Right," Weiss said. "Because letting the blind girl drive is such a wonderful idea."

"I'm not blind."

"Oh? And what's the blindfold for? A fashion statement?"

"You don't deserve these eyes."

"Rider!" Shinji said. "That's enough." He turned to Shirou. "Sorry about that. You know how women are."

"Um, I'm not sure that I do. Not to change the subject, but you're a mage."

"I come from a family historically rich in magecraft, yes."

"I didn't know there were any other mages in the school until last night, but now there's Rin, you, and … is Sakura a mage too?"

Shinji raised an eyebrow. "What makes you think that?"

"I mean, you said your family was magical, so … genetics."

"Yes, well, Sakura is adopted, so genetics don't apply."

"Oh. Wait, really?"

"What?"

"Sakura's adopted?"

"It does happen to people sometimes."

"I know that; I was adopted myself ten years ago, but I didn't know she was too. Is it … weird having an adopted sister?"

Shinji shrugged and looked away. "Let's just say that my family makes Hamlet look like the Brady Bunch." He fell silent for a moment. "Wait, you were adopted?"

WWW

"Well, we're here," Weiss said, parking below the Ryuudou Temple. "On the way back, feel free to hitch a ride on the nearest passing unicorn."

Rider probably rolled her eyes at that, but the blindfold made it hard to tell. "Are you sure this is the place?" Shirou said.

"That's what she said," Shinji replied. "She being Assassin. I don't know how trustworthy she was, on account of her being …"

"An assassin?" Shirou finished.

"I was going to say a woman, but sure. Why not."

Shirou glanced at Weiss, thoroughly impressed that she hadn't stabbed anyone yet. "Did she give you any indication about who her Master was? Because if it turns out to be Issei, I'll …"

"He's not. You might have managed to go undetected all these years by hiding under an impregnable shield of incompetence, but if there was another mage at our school, I'd know. Besides, Assassin referred to her Master as a woman, and I doubt the student council president has been hiding that as well."

"At this point, nothing would surprise me." Shirou looked around. Night had fallen, and the temple grounds had always been eerie when he _didn't_ think that an Assassin Servant was watching them from the shadows. "So, where are they?"

"Late, obviously," Shinji said. "Terribly unprofessional."

"Of course, the fact that you showed up with two extra people has nothing to do with it," Weiss said.

"Arriving with an entourage is synonymous with arriving in style."

"Oh, so we're your entourage now?" Weiss looked at Shirou. "Remind me again why we're helping him?"

"Because he needs our help."

"What he needs is a good kick in the face."

"Are you going to let your Servant talk to me like that?" Shinji demanded.

"You are making a lot of assumptions about the nature of our relationship," Shirou said. "Letting doesn't factor into it."

"I imagine," said a soft, wry voice from the darkness, "that you guys will start killing each other if I don't say something, so … hey."

The woman was dressed as a shrine maiden, with long, wavy black hair and golden eyes that almost seemed to glow. "Assassin," Shinji said. "You're late."

"Nope. I told you I'd be here when you arrived. I never said when you'd see me. Besides, I had to check with my Master to make sure she was okay with you bringing … friends."

"A location of your choosing is hardly a neutral meeting ground," Shinji said. "And I am not nearly so great a fool as to step into your lair unprepared."

Assassin held up a hand. "I said I checked, and my Master's fine with it. In fact, she would like to extend the same offer to whom I can only assume is Saber and her Master." She glanced at the two of them, and Weiss nodded in return. "My Master is at the temple proper. Right this way."

She turned and headed up the stairs, and the four of them followed. "So, what do you think?" Shirou whispered to Weiss.

"I think that outfit looks ridiculous on her."

"I mean, about her offer."

"Oh. A trap, obviously. We are continuing blithely on, I assume?"

He glanced at Shinji. If they pulled out now, Shinji would keep going, wouldn't he? And probably end up dead. "Yeah, we are."

"Of course we are."

The five of them walked up the stairs to the temple. Nothing attacked them on their way up; nothing even seemed to notice them coming. Shirou didn't come here often, but Issei's father was the head priest, and the social studies teacher Mr. Kuzuki lived there too. If a fight broke out at the temple, any number of monks could end up seeing too much.

At the top of the hill past the gate, Shirou found waiting for them none other than … Souichirou Kuzuki himself.

"Welcome, Shinji Matou, Master of Rider," he said. "And welcome, Shirou Emiya, Master of Saber. We have much to discuss."

"Mr. Kuzkuki," Shirou said. "You're Assassin's Master? I had no idea you were a mage."

"Or a woman," Shinji added.

Kuzuki's face showed no emotion, just like it hadn't in all the years Shirou had known him. "I guard my secrets carefully. As do you."

"Fair enough," Shinji said. "Let's get down to business, shall we? Starting with why I should even consider allying myself with the weakest class in the War."

The negotiations were Shinji's concern, not his. Shirou looked around for any sign of the trap that Weiss was convinced was coming, but Weiss herself had her attention focused completely on Assassin, who seemed merely bored.

"There are countless forms of weakness and of strength in this War," Kuzuki replied. "Rider is an average class, and Saber is one of the strongest, but you are the two weakest Masters who have entered this deathmatch, and your weakness will limit your Servants until you die."

Shinji's eyes narrowed. "Well, this weak Master has half a mind to order Rider to kill you both if you insist on insulting me."

Kuzuki tilted his head slightly. "Insult? I was merely making observations."

"But if we're as weak as you say," Shirou said, "why would you want to unite with us at all?"

"Because your weaknesses are irrelevant. Beneath your feet is a boundless font of Mana, greater than any one Servant could need or use. Assassin at full power is still not a frontline fighter, and your Servants limited by your reserves will never reach their full potential, but together, the rest of the Servants combined could not threaten us."

"Well now," Shinji said. "That _is_ an interesting proposal."

"Hold on," Shirou said, remembering something Rin had told him that afternoon. "If you just naturally had that much Mana, then it would go from you to her, but you said it was beneath us? How did it get there?"

Kuzuki gave Shirou the same cold look that the man was probably born with. "It was gathered, and stored."

"Gathered where?"

"Does this really matter?" Shinji said.

"Yes!"

"From three hundred and eighty-eight harvested souls, Shirou Emiya. Does that satisfy you?"

"Three hundred and …" He clenched his fists. "Yes, Mr. Kuzuki. That was all I needed to hear."

Shinji nodded in agreement. "We're in."

"What?" Shirou said, turning to him. "Weren't you listening? He says he killed nearly four hundred people, and the War's only been going on for two days!"

"And I am thoroughly impressed."

"He's a mass murderer!"

"No, if he were killing people for no reason he'd be a mass murderer. Instead, he's a war hero, and I want him on my team." Shinji met his gaze. "I take it by the unyielding rage in your eyes that I cannot persuade you into changing your mind."

"You're sick."

Shinji sighed and shook his head. "Shirou, my friend, you make me sad. Still, I am glad you consented to accompany me. This allows me to bring so much more to the negotiation table."

"What?"

"Rider, kill them both."

" _What_?"

"Finally," Rider and Weiss said in unison. Rider leapt forward swinging a chain sword, and Weiss blocked it with her sword, then plunged the blade into the ground, causing an eruption of ice all around them. Rider stumbled on the terrain, but Weiss ran across it as though she had been born on frozen shards.

It would have been a short fight if Assassin hadn't appeared behind Shirou with a blade to his throat. It wasn't as though she'd just snuck up behind him, no—it was as though she had always been there and had only been waiting for someone to notice her.

"Checkmate, Saber!" she called out.

Rider jumped back and smiled, smiled because she hadn't needed to defeat Weiss, she had only needed to distract her for long enough for Assassin to get into position. Weiss hesitated only for a moment, then lunged sword first at Assassin.

Shirou expected it to end there with Assassin slicing his throat open, but instead she vanished as though she were never there. Weiss cast a white snowflake glyph on the ground beneath them, and half-led, half-dragged Shirou out through the main gate.

No one followed them. Kuzuki referred to the ground as his source of Mana, so maybe they didn't want to fight them at a disadvantage. "That was close," Shirou said on the stairs down to the parking lot. "I can't believe Shinji betrayed us like that!"

"I can," Weiss said. "And it wasn't close. We were never in danger."

"Is that how you remember it?"

"Blake wouldn't have hurt you. She and I go back to the beginning of the school year."

"Blake? You mean Assassin? You didn't mention it."

Weiss shrugged. "We sometimes pretend not to know each other in public."

"Is there a reason why she was dressed as a Shinto priestess in a Buddhist temple?"

"Honestly, I never really understood her."

"But you understood that she wasn't going to slit my throat?"

"Of course. Checkmate. That was our team attack name. Checkmate, Freezer Burn, Ice Flower. Ruby came up with them one day and was convinced that they'd come in handy." Weiss gave him a cold look. "You must never tell her she was right."

Then they heard a scream.

WWW

"They're getting away!" Shinji said.

"Let them run," said a voice from the night sky. A silhouette against the stars floated down and took the form of a woman. "The real prize is right here."

"Another Servant," Rider said, exhausted from her brief fight. She would need to feed soon, unless Kuzuki pulled through on his deal. "Caster, I presume."

"Caster?" Shinji narrowed his eyes. "If there is another Servant in this alliance, there must be a third Master as well. Where is he? And why hasn't he shown himself before now?"

"Do you want me to tell him?" Assassin asked. She had changed into something tight fitting and monochrome during the fight.

"All will be revealed in time," Caster said. "First, our new friends must receive everything that was promised to them."

"I agree," Shinji said. "After we share in your font of Mana, it won't matter who our enemies are." Saber had insulted him, and Rin had insulted him for years. Shinji didn't know if he wanted to go after them first or save them for last. Lancer wouldn't be a threat to him with Rider at full power, and at three to one odds, not even Berserker would be a challenge. And after that … well, if one of his new "friends" died along the way, then it would be only a one on one battle with his Servant being in prime condition.

"Now, this may sting a bit," Caster said, stepping closer, "so Assassin? I'll need you to restrain Rider for a moment."

Assassin nodded and grabbed Rider from behind, wrapping her in a long, black ribbon.

"What's going on?" Rider demanded. "Let go!"

"Just relax," Assassin said. "It will be over in a moment. You might even enjoy it."

"Master?"

"Do shut up, Rider," Shinji said. "I weary of your pathetic mewlings."

"Oh, yeah," Assassin said. "You'll enjoy it."

"So how does this work?" Shinji asked, looking at Caster. Whatever was going to happen, it would be her doing. "You will restructure the contract in some way, I assume."

Caster smiled beneath her cowl and took his hand. "Yes." Then she stabbed him.

"AAAAAHHH!" Shinji tried to pull away, but Caster's grip was far stronger than her frame suggested, and red hot blood flowed from his hand.

"That is the usual location for Command Seals," Caster said. "But that didn't work, so let's try again."

"AAAAAHHH! Rider, do something!"

"Like what, genius?"

"Anything!"

He was going to die. He was going to _die_! No! Think! There had to be a way out! There had to be!

"You should not have stepped into my lair," Caster said, slicing his sleeve open, looking for his Seals. "You should not have betrayed your friends so quickly. And you certainly should not have abandoned your fate to the Witch of Betrayal."

WWW

Shirou would recognize that girlish shriek anywhere. "Shinji's in trouble!"

"How horribly karmic," Weiss said. "I'd offer to do something, but it would be in bad taste to record it, so let's continue to do nothing."

"It was a trap," Shirou realized. "Just not for us."

"Such is the petard that has hoisted your worm of a friend."

"Weiss, we have to go back!"

"No we do not."

"We can't just let him die!"

"I have never been one to interfere with poetry nor justice. You hear that? That is the sound of both at once, and there's nothing you can say to change my mind."

 _Justice._ Was it justice? Shinji tried to kill them because Shirou wouldn't help him slaughter innocent people, so letting him die was … still wrong. He wasn't going to play judge or jury when everyone around him wanted to be the executioner, and he wasn't going to say that someone deserved to die when so many people died who didn't. And that was his father's dream, wasn't it? To save … _everyone._

"Yes there is," he said. "Saber, by the power of this Command Seal, I order you—"

"Oh, don't you dare!"

WWW

A/n I was planning on making the fight with Caster one chapter, but this way I get to get this out before the holidays are over. Merry Christmas everyone, by the way, and a happy New Year! Hopefully not too many of you had to sleep in an airport for the holidays.

Thank you everyone for reading and reviewing this, and thank you Magery for always being the first to read over my chapters when their crude and crappy and for helping to make them better.

As a disclaimer, I know even less about Japanese food than I do about magecraft, and I picked the recipes out of the spinoff series, "Today's Menu for Emiya Family." I try not to study my food too closely, but Japanese cooks seem to have a supernatural ability to take disgusting sounding ingredients and combine them into something that looks like it belongs in a museum for fine art, and tastes like it was stolen from the gods.

I found out that Caster's Rule Breaker requires her to stab the Servant, not the Command Seal, but that was after I wrote the scene where Shinji was getting stabbed repeatedly, and by then I figured, meh, it's worth … breaking the rules.

And let's be honest. I've been making stuff up since chapter one.


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